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Suburbs generally provide a respite for young families and spacious dwellings for city professionals who prefer a quieter home life. Despite these broad similarities, a survey of high-end suburbs around the country shows they are not created equal -- in cost, that is, as expenditures vary greatly by state.
Take
Maumelle, Ark., for example, the most expensive suburb outside of
Little Rock, where the
median home price is $191,000 and the average household spends $12,510 on transportation per year, according to data from real estate researcher Onboard Informatics.
Compare that with
Scarsdale, N.Y., a suburb of
Manhattan where the average home sells for nearly $1.2 million and household transportation costs can add up to about $32,000 per year. Businessweek.com worked with Onboard Informatics to identify the most expensive suburbs outside the largest cities -- those with populations over 250,000, or the most populous city in the state if none are so large.
The ranking is based on costs from housing and other nonretail expenditures to taxes and transportation costs. We define "suburb" as a Census place within 40 miles of city borders, including incorporated cities, towns, villages, and unincorporated areas. There are more than 25,000 places identified by the U.S. Census Bureau nationwide. We only surveyed places with populations larger than the state median.
The following are the most expensive suburbs in the 10 biggest states by median home price.
10 Most Expensive Suburbs by State
Most Expensive Suburb in Georgia: Dunwoody
Median home price: $305,000
Cost-of-living index: 156
Nonretail spending index: 157
Location: about 17 miles north of
Atlanta
Population: 40,501
The City of
Dunwoody, which was settled in the 1800s but only incorporated on Dec. 1, 2008, has a downtown commercial and shopping area in addition to the residential subdivisions, according to dunwoodygarealestate.net. Per capita income in 2008 was $50,951, according to Census data, and median household income was $90,355.
