Alabama is home to some of the more affordable housing options in the country, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some expensive real estate markets in the state.
One city, in particular, has a typical home value approaching seven figures. And certain hot vacation destinations near the beach and Alabama’s lakes are getting pricier and pricier.
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Mountain Brook, Alabama’s “Tiny Kingdom” just south of Birmingham, is the most expensive city in the state to buy a home. The typical single-family home there was worth around $936,000 as of this February.
That’s according to data from real estate company Zillow.
No other city came close to Mountain Brook, which has a reputation for wealth.
The two closest cities, both home to popular vacation spots, were Orange Beach and the tiny town of Equality, nestled on the western shores of Lake Martin. They each had typical home values just above $680,000.
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The Birmingham metro area was well represented in the list, with six cities in the top 20 and five in the top 10, including Mountain Brook atop the list.
Some of the area’s largest suburbs made the list, including Vestavia Hills at No. 6, Homewood at No. 7, and Hoover at No. 16. Indian Springs Village (No. 4) and Lake Purdy (No. 8), both smaller, affluent areas to the south, also boasted expensive housing markets.
The Zillow data provides estimated values for single-family houses between the 35th and 65th percentile in each market — a process that eliminates extremely cheap or expensive homes.
Baldwin County, home to Alabama’s beaches and one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country, saw four cities make the list, including Orange Beach. Fairhope (No. 10), Gulf Shores (No. 13) and Spanish Fort (No. 19) were the others.
Just across the Bay, Mobile County’s Dauphin Island ranked 12th.
In the Huntsville area, just one city was among the 20 most expensive housing markets in the state — Owens Cross Roads ranked 14th, with a typical home value of around $422,000.
Even with its relatively high home value within Alabama, Mountain Brook doesn’t come close to some of the more expensive cities within the United States. It ranked as the 708th most expensive city in the nation, the only Alabama location to crack the top 1,500.
Statewide, the typical Alabama home was valued at around $223,000, the eighth cheapest of any state. It was more expensive here than Iowa, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia.
Ramsey Archibald is an award winning data reporter and editor at al.com. To read more Alabama data stories, click here. Have an idea for an Alabama data story? Email [email protected] or follow him on Twitter and Bluesky.