Surprise: Belmont One of US Most Expensive Home Markets

Sit down before hearing this news. It's official: Homes in Belmont are expensive. 

In this year's edition of Coldwell Banker's national Home Listing Report released Thursday, Nov. 29, the typical four bedroom, two bath home in the "Town of Homes" is listed at $762,700, ranks Belmont as the 48th most expensive home market in the US.  

The study looked at 2,479 communities around the country. The average listing price for a 2bdrm, 2bath in the US was $292,152.

Coldwell Banker HLR study provides a snapshot of the average listing price of four-bedroom, two-bathroom homes across the country.

This year’s report analyzes more than 72,000 home listings in more than 2,500 U.S. markets, comparing the listing prices of similar homes in markets across the country from January 2012 to June 2012, according to Coldwell Banker.

But Belmont is hardly the most expensive home market in the Bay State. A four bedroom, two bath home in Weston has reached seven figures, now selling on average for $1,105,692. That places the toney town as the US's 13th most costly single-family market.

There are eight other communities more pricey than Belmont, which is the 10th most expensive in the state. And Newton's housing stock is less than $1,000 more affordable than Belmont. 

And while on the very high end of the market, Belmont, Massachusetts is not even the most expensive Belmont in the US: Belmont, California – which like its namesake is a suburb of a nearby large port city (San Francisco) on a commuter line with excellent schools – homes average $1,098,777, the 14th highest in US.

But like the Bay State's Belmont, it's only the sixth most expensive market in the Bay area where home costs shot up with the technology market. Google, Apple, Facebook and Stanford University are all located within 15 minutes of this year’s most expensive market, Los Altos, Calif., where the average listing price of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home is $1,706,688.

With Belmont's high cost housing market comes an upscale community with the median household income topping $100,000, but just barely at $100,050. And the community is quite gray, with the median household age at 68 with only a third of homes having children living at home.