It's like New York, California and New Jersey topping the list...
New York makes sense...the land area and population density ratio is basically like no where else in America.
California makes less sense...plenty of space, plenty of poor people + plenty of rich people = no middle class population...so you're either homeless or living in a mansion in California (I know this for a fact...living in San Franscisco's Mission hood)
New Jersey makes NO sense at all....other than proximity to NYC....(I lived in Weehawkin (Hoboken) Jersey last year), Horrendous traffic, too many Industrial style highways, neighborhoods, factories still around. Some ultra rural areas in NJ are nice but only pricey because greedy Realtors know who their customer base are...rich folks fleeing NYC for a more country like environment, better schools, safer crime rates .....yeah right....try Long Island for the real deal!
Miami Beach would be by far the most sensible region for high home prices...you have a nice diversity of topless women on south beach, great frozen alcholic drinks, good schools, nightlife, plenty of parking, car friendly weather etc... only draw back is storm season and potential property damages...also the least freindly region for insurance rates...and yeah...bad expesive food on Ocean drive!
But for me...I think Upstate NY (Westchester county etc...)is the best place I've been to.
BTW...folks this is what I study at school...in fact this is what Urban Planning is all bout (Advertisement*wink*) I look at these type of data all day and make sense of it, then write a long paper projecting future trends and estimating deviation shifts along the population curve....etc...