Best Places to Live

Money's list of America's best small cities

Pricey homes

Here are towns from the Best Places database with the highest median home price.

Rank	City	Median home sale price 2009
1	Palo Alto, CA	$ 1,180,000
2	Newport Beach, CA	$ 1,008,000
3	Greenwich, CT	$ 997,498
5	Santa Monica, CA	$ 820,000
6	Arcadia, CA	$ 737,500
7	Bethesda, MD	$ 725,000
8	Santa Barbara, CA	$ 700,000
9	Mountain View, CA	$ 642,000
10	San Francisco, CA	$ 634,000
11	San Mateo, CA	$ 632,500
12	Redondo Beach, CA	$ 630,000
13	Newton, MA	$ 625,000
14	San Clemente, CA	$ 603,500
15	Redwood City, CA	$ 603,083
16	Sunnyvale, CA	$ 603,000
17	Yorba Linda, CA	$ 575,000
18	North Hempstead, NY	$ 571,750
19	Encinitas, CA	$ 569,376
20	Irvine, CA	$ 550,000
20	Santa Cruz, CA	$ 550,000
20	Fountain Valley, CA	$ 550,000
22	Huntington Beach, CA	$ 540,000
23	Carlsbad, CA	$ 535,000
24	Berkeley, CA	$ 532,375
25	San Rafael, CA	$ 530,300

From the August 2010 issue

Source: Onboard Informatics, Actual sales collected from county and municipal assessors' offices. Only includes sales within town boundaries. Only towns where there were more than 100 home sales in 2009 were considered.

Best Places Winners

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Home price trends

Hover over any of the 10 Best Places below to see how real estate prices have changed in the past 2 years.

City	Avg. listing price (June 2010)
1. Eden Prairie, MN	$430,710
2. Columbia-Ellicott City, MD	$487,602
3. Newton, MA	$989,445
4. Bellevue, WA	$801,423
5. McKinney, TX	$267,661
6. Fort Collins, CO	$271,950
7. Overland Park, KS	$308,235
8. Fishers, IN	$282,482
9. Ames, IA	$189,657
10. Rogers, AR	$269,229

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How we picked the Best Places

Using statistics from data provider Onboard Informatics, we crunched the numbers in order to zero in on America's best small cities for families. (Last year, we looked at small towns, with populations between 8,500 and 50,000.) More

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Best Places to Live

Money's list of America's best small cities