The Most Expensive Small Towns in America

"Businessweek.com worked with Zillow.com to come up with a list of the 32 smallest towns with the highest home values. We set a cap on population of 10,000 people, although most of the towns populations fall well below that. In fact, many have fewer than 1,000 residents. We also only selected one property per Metropolitan Statistical Area, a geographical designation used by the U.S. Census, because otherwise the list would have nearly entirely dominated by towns near New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. (We did, however, include more than one home from the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA MSA because, frankly, it covers so much space that it seemed silly not to.)

Readers looking for certain towns may be disappointed not to find them on our list. Some towns had populations that were too large to qualify for our list. Others such as Jupiter Island, Fla. were left off because Zillow.com didn't have enough data on them to come up with a median home price.

Besides high prices and low populations, what the towns on the list also have in common are great locations. Many of them such as, Chilmark, Stinson Beach, Calif., Water Mill in Southampton, N.Y., Block Island along Rhode Island's coast, and Haleiwa in Hawaii are known for their gorgeous beaches. Far Hills, N.J., is a beautiful New York suburb where you'll find large country estates, polo matches, and fox hunting. And the wealthy Chicago suburb of Kenilworth, which sits on Lake Michigan, is a tight-knit community with little room for new development."



Stinson Beach, Calif.
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA MSA

Median home sale price: $1,651,041
Population: 780

Median household income: $87,679

Stinson Beach is known for being a prime surfing location with its long shore. It is located about 30 minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge and is a popular day trip for San Franciscans.

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