ATTOM Data Solutions combed through the nation’s most popular vacation home cities — where at least one in every 12 buyers is looking for a second home — to find those with the best combination of good air quality, comfortable summertime temperatures, low crime, and appreciating home values — along with still-reasonable home prices.
In short, the best places to buy a summer vacation home without breaking the bank.
We ranked a total of 100 U.S. cities, and the top 10 summer vacation home bargain markets were in four states — Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida and Maryland, and all have median home prices below $275,000.
High-End Vacation Home Markets
Out of the 100 cities we ranked, there were five with median prices above a half million dollars: La Jolla, California ($1,200,000); Santa Barbara, California ($1,052,500); Laguna Niguel, California ($730,000); Boulder, Colorado ($649,900); and Marco Island, Florida ($530,000).
Methodology
Grounded in the ATTOM Data Solutions Pre-Mover Housing Index, this analysis started with 100 U.S. cities where at least 7.7 percent of all prospective buyers over the last 12 months have been looking for a second home. Those cities also needed to have sufficient data on air quality, crime, sales prices, home price appreciation over the past five years, and average temperatures from June to August — all data supplied from the ATTOM Data Warehouse. The final rankings were based on a combined index of those five factors.
