One Massachusetts town is the most expensive in the US — median prices are at $1.6 million. See what other towns will bust your budget

According to a new LendingTree report, Nantucket has the most expensive homes of any U.S. town, with a median home value of about $1.6 million. Vineyard Haven, on Martha’s Vineyard, follows at roughly $1.2 million.

The rankings upend the familiar idea that small-town living is cheaper than life in a major city. In America’s most coveted vacation towns, limited supply and wealthy buyers have pushed prices into another stratosphere.

“Home prices in small vacation towns have skyrocketed because of asymmetric buying power,” Jonathan Culp, design principal at Denver-based Land Agency, told Moneywise.

Coastal town

Even the word “town” comes with caveats. LendingTree limited its analysis to places with populations between 10,000 and 49,000, leaving out expensive suburbs such as Scarsdale, New York, that sit within larger metropolitan areas.

The towns that did make the list share another trait: they are the places summer fantasies tend to be built around. Nantucket’s year-round population hovers around 14,000, then swells beyond 80,000 in July and August. Seasonal residences make up more than half of the area’s housing.

It is easy to see the appeal. Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard have perfected a particular strain of New England romance. For decades, both islands have drawn wealthy families, celebrities and devoted summer regulars willing to pay handsomely for a piece of that idyll. Nantucket has also preserved large stretches of open land from development, protecting the very landscape people come for while making housing all the more scarce.

The same exclusivity that has helped make the islands so desirable has also created tension over who gets to enjoy them and what happens when their carefully cultivated summer charm collides with a new generation of visitors.

The summer invasion has become something of a cultural flashpoint. This year, Nantucket’s Four Winds Craft Guild hung a “No Influencers” sign after its owner grew frustrated with visitors treating the store as a backdrop for social media content.

Influencer and entrepreneur Paige Paul, formerly Paige Lorenze, who opened the first flagship for her lifestyle brand Dairy Boy on Nantucket in May, responded by putting up a sign of her own: “Everyone welcome.”

Trend away from the East Coast

That same pattern appears across the ranking. America’s priciest small towns tend to cluster around the country’s most cinematic geography.

In the country’s most desirable ski towns, the slopes aren’t the only thing that’s steep. Jackson, Wyoming, famous for its ski resorts and dramatic peaks, ranks as the third-most expensive town in the country, with a median home value of about $1.1 million. Breckenridge, Colorado, comes in fourth at $748,200.

Part of that premium comes down to geography.

“People are willing to pay a premium to ensure that they don’t miss out on a powder day,” Culp said.

Mountain towns like Breckenridge, Vail and Crested Butte face a pretty basic problem: there just isn’t much room to build. Culp said these communities have long been dominated by single-family homes, while efforts to add denser housing downtown or near the ski slopes are limited by both geography and local rules meant to preserve the scenery that draws people there in the first place.

And even when homes have been built, many are not occupied year-round. In Breckenridge, only about 28% of the town’s nearly 7,900 housing units are occupied, according to Census Bureau estimates, leaving roughly 7 in 10 classified as vacant — a category that includes properties used seasonally or recreationally.