Bungalows On A Budget: 10 Affordable 'Shore Bets' Per Realtor.com

Coastal living comes with strings attached, as anybody who's taken any note of the pick-up in violent weather patterns in the past decade-plus is well aware.

Still, the magnetic appeal of a place on or near the beach continues to be one of residential real estate's most tempting forces, now magnified as a sleeping giant economy busts out of a self-induced year-long Covid coma, liberating pent-up consumer behaviors of all sorts. All of that energy unleashed, with the added twist of work-from-anywhere carry-over for at least a few more months, means beach beacons beckon with almost unprecedented allure.

That's why havens of still-affordable – by some lights, anyway, with median home prices ranging from a low of $145,000 in Atlantic City, NJ, to $475,000 in Dennis Port, MA – beachside houses are the diamonds in the rough of seasonal real estate buying and selling in a hyperactive market as it is.

The National Association of Realtors Realtor.com® research team switched on its algorithms and filtered massive databases to generate a short-list of shoreline meccas within reach of Main Street household budgets.

As we do each summer, we crunched the numbers to find the nation’s best affordable beach towns—the ones that offer plenty of ocean access, lots of fun things to do, and affordable prices for those who want to kick back on the sandy shores on a budget. These places tended to be smaller spots on the East Coast with a few notable exceptions.

Hot weather and hot real estate, a double-whammy that puts sellers in the driver's seat, for now. Still, many of those sellers also have to figure out where they'll go next – either to buy or rent.

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