Best Places to Live 2009

WHERE VULTURES SCORE
If you've got the financial security—not to mention the stomach—here's where to look for real steals.

In a few communities, price tumbles have yielded golden opportunities for the right buyer. Whether the misstep was overbuilding or ego-inflated pricing, real estate experts suggest that further depreciation will be minimal, while the potential upsides are strong. Especially if you've got the right mindset about what you're buying in a home. "It's a hard asset, it builds equity, and at the end of the loan, you own it outright," says John Ranco, director of sales for Gibson Sotheby's International Realty. "I think we've all forgotten about that."

I. The Quaint Queue
To get the Norman Rockwell look without the markup, scout these discounted charmers.
 
    AVON
    Median home price    $277,000
    One-year change    -4.65%
    Since market peak    -14.51%

This tiny enclave tucked away off Route 24 near Randolph offers one of the best shots at finding a starter home (or golden-years retreat) close to Boston. An industrial park to the west gives Avon its low tax rate, which adds up to less than $3,000 annually for the sort of three-bedroom ranch houses in oversupply here. Foreclosures are an opportunity: Thirty-seven percent of local home-owners are underwater, according to real estate website Zillow. Though most of the inventory is postwar tract houses, currently selling in the mid-$200,000s, you can find remnants of a rural past—in Colonial and Victorian styles—on larger lots.
 
    MEDFIELD
    Median home price    $530,000
    One-year change    -3.64%
    Since market peak    -14.17%

Curt Schilling's 11,000-square-foot pile has been on the market in Medfield for nearly a year. Granted, No. 38 has marked it up to a hefty $8 million (despite a kitchen rumored to date from when Drew Bledsoe owned the place), but the home could stand in for the town's market in general. Pie-in-the-sky listings and flagging sales for "older" homes have led to properties idling and prices deflating. Yet Medfield itself still offers value, including an excellent high school, a new softball field partially donated by the Schillings, and a truly old-school downtown luncheonette. Short sales are unusual, but starter homes in the $400,000s can be found on side streets near the town center or in places like Pine Needle Park and Belknap Estates. In the market's upper and top tiers are '90s-era construction such as Wild Holly Lane and the in-development Scott Colwell neighborhood on the Minuteman trail, where the Schillings have reportedly bought lots.

    SCITUATE
    Median home price    $438,250
    One-year change    -12.35%
    Since market peak    -16.52%

Scituate has a well-deserved reputation for being the friendliest burg on the South Shore. There's also the ocean, the harbor, Hunter's Pond, the North River, and any number of picturesque views over cranberry bogs or tidal marshland; from the town's four cliffs you can see Provincetown on a clear day. Yet the mentality among buyers has typically been: Why buy Scituate when you can get Cohasset (i.e., caviar)? That attitude has always kept prices in check, and the recession has softened them further still. For small or starter homes, the Egypt area, with its own beach, is consistently the most affordable. In Minot, turn-of-the-century homes can run from $800,000 to the multimillions.

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