It’s that time of year again—school’s out for the summer, and families across the country are packing up to hit the beaches. You’ve likely dreamed of turning your summer vacation spot into a regular weekend getaway or even a full-time residence. But buying a beach home comes with a major obstacle: the high price of prime coastal real estate. With that in mind, the Realtor.com® team has again calculated the most affordable beach towns for homebuyers for 2024. Following a few tweaks to the methodology, Mississippi’s Gulf Shore still reigns supreme for affordability. However, this year, Pascagoula, MS, unseated Gulfport, MS, as the country’s No. 1 beach town for home affordability
“We’re a small town, where everybody knows everybody else,” says Bernie O’Sullivan, a senior loan officer with Delmar Mortgage who has lived in Pascagoula for more than six decades. “We have a huge beach park where they bring in music several times a year. … It’s a very laid-back town, with beautiful sunsets.”
For the first time, our top 10 list includes two cities on the West Coast: Newport, OR, and Ocean Shores, WA. And surprisingly, this year’s list includes a village on upscale Cape Cod: Dennis Port, MA, where small beach bungalows abound.
Other entries for 2024 include beach towns on the Jersey Shore and in the Carolinas, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana.
One note of caution: Some beach towns on this list, though not all, made the cut primarily due to their abundance of condos, which are typically priced lower than single-family homes and bring down the median list prices. While condos can offer an excellent path to attainably priced beachfront ownership, they typically have monthly homeowners association fees, which are not included in our calculations and can significantly affect affordability.
Our rankings also don’t factor in flood insurance, which can be a major expense for coastal homeowners. Recent changes to federal rules have sharply increased flood insurance premiums in some areas, with Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida seeing some of the largest increases.
