What $1M Buys in Real Estate Has Dramatically Changed
Rifle, Colorado may not be a destination at the top of everyone’s bucket list of places to live. Yet according to Realtor.com’s just released What is Luxury report, this micrometro in rural Garfield County leads the nation with the highest starting price for an entry-level luxury home at $16,474,000. In July 2025, would-be buyers could select a home in Rifle from 515 listings over $1 million.
On paper, the reason is not obvious. 2020 Census data cited by Wikipedia showed the town’s population as 10,437. The median income for a family was $48,714 and 6.4% of the population lived below the poverty line.
At the base of the Roan Plateau mountain, Rifle is known as a scenic location for outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing. Cattle-ranching is a major industry, along with mining. The public land, controlled by the U.S, Bureau of Land Management, is also a source of oil and natural gas extracted by fracking. And a few enormous stretches of land, some exceeding 1,000 acres, are being marketed for private ownership.
“The highest prices are for large acreages of land with extensive water rights. Good for raising livestock – anywhere from cattle to sheep to alpaca and llamas. If it’s flat enough and fairly close to a municipality it could be good for development,” noted Shannon Kyle, managing broker with Cheryl&Co. Real Estate and Property Management in Rifle.
Realtor.com’s report emphasizes that luxury ain’t what it used to be, and $1 million doesn’t go as far as it used to. “The luxury threshold has climbed from about $797K in 2016 to $1.3M today. To match the same ‘luxury status’ that $1M delivered less than a decade ago, buyers now need to spend closer to $1.6M,” it noted. Luxury homes now make up 13% of U.S. listings. New York City has the most such listings in the nation with one in three homes meeting that standard.
One step up from entry-level luxury is high-end luxury, which includes the top 5% of homes nationwide that have a starting price of $2 million, placing them in the 95th percentile.
Ultra-luxury is the highest level, the 99th percentile, including about 1% of homes nationwide. An extreme example of this type of home is a 74.1-acre property now on sale for $300,000,000 in Aspen. The property’s residence, referred to as the Little Lake Lodge, has 18 bedrooms, 20 full bathrooms, and four partial bathrooms.
In general, ultra-luxury house prices start at $5.4 million “where uniqueness, location, and lifestyle amenities climbs to more than 12 times the typical home price.”
These attributes can push the listing price well above median levels. For example, in Rifle entry-level luxury homes sell at a multiple of 9.7 to the median listing price, according to Realtor.com.
Heber, UT ranked second for its entry-level luxury home prices. The town with a rapidly growing population and a tourism-based economy had 1,028 listings over $1 million and prices started at $6,800,000.
Other cities in the top 10 list for entry-level luxury homes were Key West ($4.5 million), Los Angeles ($3,995 million), Bridgeport, CT ($3,950 million), Kahului, HI ($3.9 million), Santa Rosa, CA ($3.5 million), San Jose ($3.495 million), Barnstable Town, MA ($3.495 million) and Naples ($3.4 million).
“From California’s coastal enclaves to wealth hubs in the Northeast, just 10 metros account for more than a third (36%) of all million-dollar listings nationwide,” the report commented. “Their dominance underscores deep and sustained demand for premium real estate, fueled by international appeal, constrained land supply, and concentrations of high-paying jobs.”
The top 10 metros with the most million-dollar listings as of July 2025 were led by New York, with 11,989 listings over $2,887,829. Los Angeles followed with 10,840 over $3,995,000, followed by Miami with 10,074 over $2,087,000, Seattle with 3,147 over $1,927,000, Dallas with 2,998 over $994,190, San Diego with 2,849 over $2,903,000, San Francisco with 2,844 over $2,649,775, Boston with 2,546 over $2,603,000, Atlanta with 2,485 over $938,150, and Washington, DC with 2,457 over $1,451,719.
“These ‘staple’ luxury markets consistently lead in million-dollar inventory – places where high-end living isn’t an outlier, but rather the norm,” the report commented.
Source: GlobeSt/ALM