Natomas is not a city. It is a community in the northwestern corner of Sacramento, and the name covers two different neighborhoods with two different housing stocks built about forty years apart. Everything that confuses people about buying or selling here comes out of that one fact, so it is where this page starts.
ONE NAME, TWO MARKETS
Interstate 80 is the line that matters.
North Natomas and South Natomas are separated by the freeway and they are not interchangeable. North Natomas was farmland on the river floodplain until the mid-1990s, when it was built out quickly with houses, office parks and retail. South Natomas came earlier, in residential subdivisions from the 1950s through the 1980s.
- North Natomas is mostly 1990s and later. Houses of that era tend to share their systems ages, which is useful when you are reading an inspection report, and tend to sit on newer street and utility work.
- South Natomas spans roughly four decades of building, so two houses a few streets apart can be thirty years apart in age and in nothing else that looks different.
When someone tells you what a house in Natomas is worth, the first useful question is which side of the freeway it is on. An average across both is an average of two markets.
IF YOU ARE BUYING HERE
Two questions decide most of it.
Which side of Interstate 80, and how old is the house. Those two answers set what to inspect, what to expect from the systems, and which comparable sales are genuinely comparable.
- Age of the systems. In a 1990s North Natomas house, the roof, the furnace and the water heater are usually approaching or past the age where they matter at once, rather than one at a time.
- What the neighborhood was before. Part of this area was agricultural land, and part was built over decades. That history shows up in lot shapes, drainage and what the records will tell you.
- The flood question. Asked and answered below, because it belongs in the contingency period rather than the week before closing.
My job in the contingency period is to get those answered while they can still change your answer, rather than after the appraisal when the only move left is to renegotiate.
IF YOU ARE SELLING HERE
Price from your side of the freeway, not from Natomas.
A citywide or area-wide average will misprice your house, because the houses on the other side of the freeway are not your competition. What sells against your house is the houses near it of the same age and condition.
The other half is deciding what to do before it goes on the market. Some work earns back and some of it does not, and the difference is not obvious. You get told which is which rather than a general instruction to make the house nice.
THE FLOOD QUESTION
This is a floodplain. That is not a rumour.
Natomas is a historical floodplain and it is subject to flooding. That is a fact about the ground, not about any particular house, and it is the single question that comes up most often here from both sides of a transaction.
What it changes in practice is insurance and lending. Whether flood insurance is required, and what it costs, depends on the flood zone the property is mapped in and on the lender, and both of those are checkable for a specific address rather than guessable for an area. If a property is inside a mapped flood area, that will come up in any sale, and the insurance number alone can change what a buyer can afford to pay. It is far better raised early than discovered late, which is the same reason I raise it here rather than let you find it in a lender email.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY IN NATOMAS
A lot, and more of it than people expect.
This is one of the region’s retail and employment centres rather than a bedroom suburb, and that shapes who buys here.
- The Promenade at Sacramento Gateway, Natomas Marketplace and Park Place Shopping Center, with smaller centres throughout.
- Sacramento International Airport, inside Natomas as the county defines it, which is why the hotel stock is here.
- The site of ARCO Arena, later Sleep Train Arena, the former home of the Kings, demolished in 2022.
- North Natomas Regional Park, plus a network of trails and green space.
- Most of the area is served by Natomas Unified School District, with small portions served by Twin Rivers Unified.
Access to Interstate 5 and Interstate 80 is the reason a lot of people live here and work somewhere else, and it is also why the traffic pattern at a given hour is worth checking before you commit to a commute.
QUESTIONS I GET ABOUT NATOMAS
Straight answers.
Is Natomas a city?
No. It is a community inside the city of Sacramento, and it is the only area on this list that is not an incorporated city of its own. That is why you will not find a Natomas city hall, a Natomas incorporation date, or property records held in the name of Natomas. Address questions go to the city and county.
What county is Natomas in?
Sacramento County. Natomas sits in the northwestern part of the county, and the county line is generally the northern boundary of the area. If you need to know exactly which records apply to a specific address, send it and I will tell you which office holds them.
North or South Natomas?
Both are Natomas and they are different markets, separated by Interstate 80. Which one a house is in changes both what to look at and what it is comparable to, so it is worth knowing before you start comparing prices.
Why are there two market reports for Natomas?
Because the market data is split the same way the area is. North and South Natomas are separate reporting areas, and Windermere publishes a report for each rather than one that averages them together. Both are on this page, so you can see the two markets rather than a number that describes neither.
Does a house in Natomas need flood insurance?
It depends on the mapped flood zone for that property and on the requirements of the lender, and that is an address-level answer rather than an area-level one. It is worth establishing during the contingency period so it can be priced into your decision rather than arriving as a surprise.
NEXT STEP
Talking about a house in Natomas.
Send the address and you will get what it is worth, the sales it was priced against, and the honest answer about which route suits you. Both of those are free to ask, and neither commits you to anything.
A comparative market analysis is a licensed agent’s opinion of value based on recent sales, current competition and the condition of your home. It is prepared for marketing purposes and is not an appraisal, which under California law must be prepared by a licensed appraiser. No analysis can promise what a buyer will pay.
MARKET REPORT
What the market in Natomas is doing.
Windermere publishes a market report for this area every month: sales activity for the prior month and the year to date, broken out by price range. This is the report for single family homes, and it is the current edition rather than a copy taken at some point in the past. It opens with the month it covers and the figures behind it.
North Natomas
South Natomas
Published by Windermere Real Estate. Statistics compiled by Burrow Services, Inc. for the benefit of Windermere Real Estate. Days on market, average prices and rates of appreciation are for reading trends, not for pricing a house; MLS reporting rules mean the data may not capture every sale. It is a starting point for a conversation, not an appraisal, and an appraisal of your house is a different thing.
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