This City Has the Most Expensive Houses in America

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This City Has the Most Expensive Houses in America

© Sundry Photography / iStock via Getty Images

Home prices in the United States have skyrocketed this year. According to the carefully followed S&P Corelogic Case-Shiller Index, which tracks U.S. home prices, the median price of a home nationwide rose 19.8% in August, compared with the same month last year. In Phoenix, Tampa and San Diego, the number was above 25% for the same period.

There are several reasons for the jump. Among them are extremely low interest rates. Another is the migration of people from the large coastal cities like New York and San Francisco to less expensive cities inland. In theory, these should have cheaper real estate. However, sharp demand increases have pushed prices up by double-digit percentages. Many people who have moved also believe that smaller cities and towns will have a better quality of life. Moreover, the ability to work from home, largely triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, has allowed people to move long distances from their former offices.

Realtor.com’s September 2021 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report points out that “The median national home price for active listings remained the same from August through September, at $380,000. The median listing price again grew by 8.6% over last year, the same growth rate as last month.”

Despite the migration from large coastal cities, they continue to be the most expensive in terms of real estate prices. The market in the San Jose metropolitan area has a median listing of $1,250,000, the highest in the country. Nearby San Francisco has a median price of $993,000, also remarkably high. New York is also very high at $608,000.
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These are the median asking prices of homes in the top 50 U.S. metropolitan areas:

  • Atlanta, Ga. ($398,000)
  • Austin, Texas ($546,000)
  • Baltimore, Md. ($335,000)
  • Birmingham, Ala. ($271,000)
  • Boston, Mass. ($675,000)
  • Buffalo, N.Y. ($230,000)
  • Charlotte, N.C. ($390,000)
  • Chicago, Ill. ($332,000)
  • Cincinnati, Ohio ($312,000)
  • Cleveland, Ohio ($199,000)
  • Columbus, Ohio ($289,000)
  • Dallas, Texas ($396,000)
  • Denver, Colo. ($600,000)
  • Detroit, Mich. ($253,000)
  • Hartford, Conn. ($337,000)
  • Houston, Texas ($363,000)
  • Indianapolis, Ind. ($280,000)
  • Jacksonville, Fla. ($370,000)
  • Kansas City, Mo. ($325,000)
  • Las Vegas, Nev. ($430,000)
  • Los Angeles, Calif. ($968,000)
  • Louisville, Ky. ($250,000)
  • Memphis, Tenn. ($249,000)
  • Miami, Fla. ($463,000)
  • Milwaukee, Wis. ($279,000)
  • Minneapolis, Minn. ($350,000)
  • Nashville, Tenn. ($448,000)
  • New Orleans, La. ($340,000)
  • New York, N.Y. ($608,000)
  • Oklahoma City, Okla. ($277,000)
  • Orlando, Fla. ($380,000)
  • Philadelphia, Pa. ($322,000)
  • Phoenix, Ariz. ($475,000)
  • Pittsburgh, Pa. ($230,000)
  • Portland, Ore. ($555,000)
  • Providence, R.I. ($429,000)
  • Raleigh, N.C. ($427,000)
  • Richmond, Va. ($350,000)
  • Riverside, Calif. ($540,000)
  • Rochester, N.Y. ($217,000)
  • Sacramento, Calif. ($589,000)
  • San Antonio, Texas ($346,000)
  • San Diego, Calif. ($827,000)
  • San Francisco, Calif. ($993,000)
  • San Jose, Calif. ($1,250,000)
  • Seattle, Wash. ($677,000)
  • St. Louis, Mo. ($250,000)
  • Tampa, Fla. ($363,000)
  • Virginia Beach, Va. ($315,000)
  • Washington, D.C. ($510,000)

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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