NEW YORK(CNN/Money) - Among big American cities there are huge disparities in how much house a million dollars can buy. Median house prices vary enormously, even within regions.

Boston and Philadelphia, for example, are two of the biggest urban centers in the Northeast. But the price of a four-bedroom, 2-and-1/2 bath house within the borders of Beantown runs about $1.05 million, more than twice as much as a similar house would run in the City of Brotherly Love, according to Coldwell Banker's latest Home Price Comparison Index (HPCI) -- see the full list here.

The contrast in house prices can be even greater when the cities lie in different regions. The HPCI survey compares house prices in typical neighborhoods for corporate middle-management transferees to settle in. It lists the average price for San Diego at $607,000, for example, and for Houston at a mere $173,000.

Those same sorts of disparities hold true for the upper end of the market. You can get a lot more for your million dollars in soft urban markets like Detroit (where the HPCI is $282,000) and St. Louis ($229,000) than in pricey ones like San Francisco ($1.125 million) and the neighborhood of Bayside in New York City ($641,000).

In inexpensive cities, million-dollar houses are often huge and may come with such deluxe features as marble baths, swimming pools, and media rooms. By contrast, million dollar homes in the hottest urban markets can be quite ordinary, no more posh than the average home in down-market locations.

See the gallery for examples of how much house a million dollars can buy in eight far-flung U.S. cities.