[Rain Man]

My rankings:

#1 - Napa. What's not to love? It's in redwoods, it's reasonably close to a town, and it's a nice space even if it's a bit dated and inefficient. It's not really a high end home in terms of trim and fixtures, but it's livable and I like the general design.

#2 - Sacramento. This house fascinates me. It's cool as heck - clearly the most interesting home in terms of design on this list - but come on. It's got to be in a frequent flood zone or something. I'm afraid that it would fall into the river at some point or that it would get hit by an errant boat in a heavy rain. Nonetheless, the house is so cool that I'd be really tempted to go with this as #1 if it wasn't in Sacramento, but I've heard that Sacramento gets really hot in the summer. This house is really tempting.

#3 - San Francisco. It's smallish, but big enough to live in. It's not fancy, with basic fixtures. But come on. It's on Lombard Street in San Francisco. You've got all of the amenities of the big city. I would rank this higher, but I think those photos of the views are from the roof or something and not from the apartment. This is a second-floor unit, so my guess is that your view is going to be the apartment building across the street. This is purely a location play, and it's a good location, though (with the caveat that a San Francisco expert may have better input on the neighborhood).

#4 - Crescent City. To some extent, it's not right to include this in northern California because the location is such an outlier. But hey, it's in northern California. I'm really intrigued by the "off-grid" statements, but I wonder if it's really off-grid or if it's just got solar. They don't really explain. It's a nice house, but it's more of a cabin than a full time residence in my opinion, as witnessed by the accordion door to the bedroom. I think this house would live smaller than it looks.

#5 - Carmel. What's underrated about this house is its great fixtures. They went top end on a lot of home elements, and I really like the indoor-outdoor space with the rising door. On the down side, there's not much curb appeal. But the bigger deal in the end is you're not getting views and you're not near restaurants and shopping but you're paying premium prices. I like the house, but the location is overvalued.