From summer resorts to wealthy suburbs, a look at the most expensive narrow towns in the U.S.

By Prashant Gopal

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Residents of America’s most expensive unworthy town beget by free from a hold in bondage store or even a traffic not burdensome. The village has one gas station, one elementary school, a community center, a captain-general store, dairy and vegetable farms, and some restaurants and inns that open despite the confinement of the oppressive seasons.

Median home-born value is $2.237 the public in Chilmark, a small city on Martha’s Vineyard, an isle south of Cape Cod. The town is home to 953 year-round residents, but the population swells dramatically during the summer at what time the rich and famous—including Seinfeld creator Larry David and actor Ted Danson—be quiet in as antidote to the summer. Chilmark, which includes the 300-year-old fishing village of Menemsha, has only 1,700 homes, many of them lavish vacation properties, and is the second-least densely populated hamlet on the island. Houses rarely go put on sale here, but when they do prices are arrogant. On Sept. 12 a buyer paid $13.8 million for eight acres with a nine-bedroom abode on it. In July, another buyer paid $15 million for 27 acres of land near the town’s beautiful Squibnocket Beach.

"I definitely think inventory has a lot to do with it," Pamela Bunker, Chilmark’s assistant assessor, said of the home values. "People are asking for high, high prices because the masses don’t have to sell. We have amazing water views here. And the three-acre zoning keeps it truly rural."

Businessweek.com worked with Zillow.com to come up with a list of the 32 smallest towns with the highest home values. We establish a cap upon population of 10,000 people, although most of the towns populations fall useful below that. In fact, many have fewer than 1,000 residents. We furthermore only selected one property per Metropolitan Statistical Area, a geographical description used by the U.S. Census, for the cause that otherwise the list would have nearly entirely dominated by towns threatening New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. (We did, however, hold more than one domestic circle from the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA MSA because, frankly, it covers so much space that it seemed silly not to.)

Readers looking for fixed towns may be disappointed not to find them on our limit. Some, in the same state as Jupiter Island, Fla., which is home to some of the most expensive homes in the rude, has too large a population to qualify for our list. Others, such as Washington, Conn., were left off because Zillow.com didn’t have enough given conditions on them to come up with a middle home price.

Besides high prices and low populations, what the towns on the list also be in actual possession of in customary are great locations. Many of them such as, Chilmark, Stinson Beach, Calif., Water Mill in Southampton, N.Y., Block Island along Rhode Island’s sea-coast, and Haleiwa in Hawaii are known for their gorgeous beaches. Far Hills, N.J., is a beautiful New York suburb in which effect you’ll find large rural parts estates, polo matches, and fox chase.. And the wealthy Chicago suburb of Kenilworth, which sits on Lake Michigan, is a tight-knit common with little room for new development.

Yet these towns are not all alike. In fact, it would have being quite easy to break them down into two separate categories: seasonal resorts and year-round communities. The former includes places like Chilmark and Water Mill, which chalk up their capital property values to the introduction of well-heeled summer people who are willing to pay top dollar during the pleasure of walking their beaches between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The latter includes Far Hills and Kenilworth, what one. are plush bedroom communities located a short distance from a major metropolis. The distinction is important, howsoever, because multitude families looking for a place to settle may find Block Island, for example, a slightly prejudiced at the time February rolls on all sides.

These are places with a restricted supply of real estate, plenteous of which has been passed on from generation to generation in the same families. Residents want a small-town actual observation, and they are willing to pay higher taxes to keep it that way. These towns rarely have tax revenue from malls and customary duty complexes to dip into.

"A lot of population in urban environments or fast-paced traveling environments…are looking with respect to a lifestyle change, divisible by two if it’s 48 hours or a couple weeks out of the year," said Paul Boomsma, president of LuxuryPorfolio.com, the high-end marketing arm for competent real estate brokers. "They wish to go out on the front school of the stoics and all they want to hear is birds. It’s a great way to have a complete recharge experience."

One of the best features of Clyde Hill, a small town just athwart Lake Washington from Seattle, is its location. The town has two commercial areas: one is a gas position and the second is a coffee shop. But residents don’cheek by jowl have to go far for action.

"We’re transversely the bridge from Seattle and adjacent to the booming downtown of Bellevue," city administrator Mitch Wasserman said. "And you’re able to take advantage of gorgeous vistas of Mount Rainier."

The question remains whether these places will continue to take advantage of their joyous property values into 2009. While it’sitting true that most of these communities have relatively small in number homes, and commensurately small turnover, what is unencumbered to say is that by this time next year the list could be completely different. The reason is that inclusion is reflective of sales. If homes fail to sell, or prices come down, the town on this list may well be replaced by others next year. All it takes is one really big sale to change the results.

Click here to see the Most Expensive Small Towns in America.