This Is the Most Expensive Suburb for Homebuyers

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the Most Expensive Suburb for Homebuyers

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Home prices have skyrocketed in the past two years, fueled by low mortgage rates, the desire to move to cities outside America’s huge metros, and the mobility people have gained because they can work from home.

Some of these circumstances have changed recently, which might change homebuying patterns. Mortgage rates have risen from under 3% to over 5%. Smaller cities have become expensive because of the migration to these metros. The one thing that persists is that people can work from home permanently. People who do not want city living under any circumstances continue to view suburbs as attractive.

To determine the most expensive suburb for homebuyers, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data compiled by StorageCafé, an online platform for storage rental listings. The site identified the top 100 suburbs for premier living, according to numerous criteria, including population density, employment opportunities, number of retail stores and restaurants, park and recreation areas and crime rates. It defines suburbs as municipalities with between 10,000 and 100,000 inhabitants located near the 100 largest metro areas for which data was available. It then consulted the Zillow home value index to determine average home values in each suburb and its nearest principal city.
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Note that home value is not the same as home price. Value is the result of an appraisal of what a home is worth, while price is a measure of what a buyer is willing to pay for it. Nonetheless, value is considered a good way to estimate future prices.

The most expensive suburb for homebuyers is Palo Alto, California. The average home value there in March of 2022 was $3,846,548. Its nearby principal city is San Jose, California, where the average home value was $1,444,420.
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Click here to see the 20 most expensive suburbs for homebuyers.

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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