Editor’s Note: This is not investment advice, and we are not financial advisers.
Suppose real estate is the most significant investment a majority of people make in their lifetime. In that case, it’s best to understand the places in Alaska with best potential return on investment.
After working in real estate adjacent roles for over a decade, I had the hypothesis that the best place to buy for a return on investment would be up-and-coming cities. Smaller cities where crime might be high now, but people still move to.
To test my hypothesis, we are going to look at places in Alaska that are growing faster than average, but where home prices are below average, and crime rates are higher than average.
In everyday terms, these might be “deals”. The best deal in Alaska at the moment according to Saturday Night Science? That would be Homer.
2.2% population growth · 1.7% home price growth
Located in
Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska
Homer is a city located in Kenai Peninsula Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is two hundred and eighteen miles southwest of Anchorage. According to the 2010 Census, the population is 5,003. Long known as The “Halibut Fishing Capital of the World.” Homer is also nicknamed “the end of the road,” and more recently, “the cosmic hamlet by the sea.”
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.9% population growth · -1.3% home price growth
Located in
Kodiak Island Borough, Alaska
Kodiak is one of seven communities and the main city on Kodiak Island, Kodiak Island Borough, in the U.S. state of Alaska. All commercial transportation between the entire island and the outside world goes through this city either via ferryboat or airline. The population was 6,130 as of the 2010 census. 2014 estimates put the population at 6,304.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.0% population growth · -1.8% home price growth
Located in
Bethel Census Area, Alaska
Bethel is a city located near the west coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, approximately 400 miles west of Anchorage, in the Bethel Census Area. Accessible only by air and river, Bethel is the main port on the Kuskokwim River and is an administrative and transportation hub for the 56 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
2.1% population growth · 2.0% home price growth
Located in
Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska
Palmer is a city in and the borough seat of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is part of the Anchorage Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city is 5,937.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
1.0% population growth · 1.2% home price growth
Located in
Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska
Kenai is a city in the Kenai Peninsula Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. The population was 7,100 as of the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.9% population growth · 0.9% home price growth
Located in
Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Alaska
Ketchikan is a city in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Alaska, United States, the southeasternmost city in Alaska. With a population at the 2010 census of 8,050, it is the fifth-most populous city in the state, and tenth-most populous community when census-designated places are included.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.3% population growth · -2.5% home price growth
Located in
Sitka City and Borough, Alaska
The City and Borough of Sitka, formerly Novo-Arkhangelsk, or New Archangel under Russian rule, is a unified city-borough located on Baranof Island and the southern half of Chichagof Island in the Alexander Archipelago of the Pacific Ocean, in the U.S. state of Alaska. As of the 2010 census, the population was 8,881. In terms of land area, it is the largest city-borough in the U.S., with a land area of 2,870.3 square miles and a total area of 4,811.4 square miles ; however, it is the smallest of Alaska’s boroughs. Urban Sitka, the part that is usually thought of as the “city” of Sitka, is on the west side of Baranof Island.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
3.0% population growth · 2.5% home price growth
Located in
Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska
Wasilla is a city in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, United States and the sixth-largest city in Alaska. It is located on the northern point of Cook Inlet in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of the southcentral part of the state. The city’s population was 7,831 at the 2010 census. Estimates in 2013 put the population at roughly 8,621. Wasilla is the largest city in the borough and a part of the Anchorage metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 396,142 in 2013.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.5% population growth · 3.2% home price growth
Located in
Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska
Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.5% population growth · 1.5% home price growth
Located in
Juneau City and Borough, Alaska
The City and Borough of Juneau, commonly known as Juneau, is the capital city of Alaska. It is a unified municipality located on the Gastineau Channel in the Alaskan panhandle, and it is the second largest city in the United States by area. Juneau has been the capital of Alaska since 1906, when the government of what was then the District of Alaska was moved from Sitka as dictated by the U.S. Congress in 1900. The municipality unified on July 1, 1970, when the city of Juneau merged with the city of Douglas and the surrounding Greater Juneau Borough to form the current municipality, which is larger by area than both Rhode Island and Delaware.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Alaska’s statewide median.
Alaska statewide median: $387,636
On the map
Where Alaska’s best buys are
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How do you determine the best places to buy a home in Alaska for 2026?
We were in real estate for almost five years and have worked on this site for over a decade. Suffice it to say we’ve put a lot of thought into finding an excellent place to buy a home.
So all that thinking has come to this moment where we get to spell out how we’d approach finding an up-and-coming place to live in Alaska. Put differently, the analysis will try to find places in Alaska with undervalued homes relative to pent-up demand using Saturday Night Science.
To do that, we looked at the most recent American Community Survey Census data for 2020-2024 and compared it to the previous vintage. Specifically, we used the following criteria:
- Y-o-Y Change In Population (People want to live here)
- Y-o-Y Change In Median Home Prices (People are willing to pay for it)
- Home Prices Relative To The State Average (It’s still kinda cheap)
We want places that are growing, have seen home prices increase in recent years, and are still “cheap” for Alaska, with these caveats: home prices had to be within 20% of the state average, home prices increased in the last year, and the city had above 5,000 people.
So of the 333 cities and towns in Alaska, only 11 places made it through our initial filters to even be considered.
We then ranked each place from 1 to 11 for the above criteria, with 1 being the best. We averaged the rankings to create a “best place to buy” index, with the place having the lowest index being the best.
Turns out that Homer is the best potential gem in the not-so-rough in the Last Frontier.
The full plate
Best Places To Buy A Home In Alaska
Click any column to sort. Search by city name.
| Rank | City | Population | Median Home Price | Population Change | Home Price Increase |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Homer | 5,877 | $415,050 | 2.2% | 1.7% |
| 2 | Kodiak | 5,447 | $437,300 | -0.9% | -1.3% |
| 3 | Bethel | 6,312 | $395,654 | -0.0% | -1.8% |
| 4 | Palmer | 6,268 | $429,396 | 2.1% | 2.0% |
| 5 | Kenai | 7,641 | $319,496 | 1.0% | 1.2% |
| 6 | Ketchikan | 8,078 | $397,251 | -0.9% | 0.9% |
| 7 | Sitka | 8,368 | $492,286 | -0.3% | -2.5% |
| 8 | Wasilla | 9,720 | $416,650 | 3.0% | 2.5% |
| 9 | Fairbanks | 32,083 | $296,929 | -0.5% | 3.2% |
| 10 | Juneau | 31,794 | $470,456 | -0.5% | 1.5% |
| 11 | Anchorage | 288,976 | $410,782 | -0.0% | 2.5% |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024 via Saturday Night Science. 11 Alaska cities cleared the filters.
Summary
Summary: The Best Places To Purchase A House In Alaska for 2026
There’s our analysis of the best places to buy a house in Alaska. And, to be clear, we aren’t necessarily saying these places are the best places to live, just that it looks like they might be in a couple of years based on the data.
In fact, every place in the following table meets our criteria, so even though it may not look super long, remember we started off with all 333 places in the state.
The best cities to buy a house in Alaska are Homer, Kodiak, Bethel, Palmer, Kenai, Ketchikan, Sitka, Wasilla, Fairbanks, and Juneau.
So if we could rent or buy in these cities, we’d definitely buy.
