Realtor.com Ranks Cedar Hill Among Most-Affordable Suburbs in America. We knew that.

Cedar Hill is no secret around here.

From Dallas, it’s a straight shot south down Highway 67, nestled just below the broadcast towers known as Hill Tower. From the highway, the Dallas County suburb looks nondescript with your standard shopping centers, service stations, and fast-food choices on either side.

But now, Cedar Hill can separate itself from other Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs with new-found national acclaim. According to Realtor.com, Cedar Hill is second on its list of most-affordable suburbs in America.

That’s right. America.

Realtor.com’s economics team identified suburbs in the 10 largest metropolitan areas that offer some of the more affordable square footage for larger homes. The team also based its analysis on median listing prices of single-family homes with at least 1,800 square feet and within 25 miles of downtown metro areas. The lowest price per square foot topped the list.

“Homebuyers these days are looking for more space — for right now, in the midst of a pandemic when we’re spending an incredible amount of time at home, but also in the post-pandemic future, when life returns to normal,” Danielle Hale, Realtor.com chief economist says. “They are also mindful of expenses given a still-healing economy and elevated unemployment rate, so affordability is top of mind.”

The most affordable suburb in America is Sicklerville, N.J., 30 miles southweast of Philadelphia. The median listing price for a Sicklerville home is $282,000.

In Cedar Hill, buyers can find large homes with plenty of outdoor space. The median listing price for a home in Cedar Hill is $352,000.

The city, which was founded around 1846, is known as “the city in a park” for good reason. It has 32 parks and 36 miles of trails for hikers and mountain bikers and a shoreline that features Joe Pool Lake and Cedar Hill State Park.

To the east are several subdivisions and planned communities. To the west of Cedar Hill is Hillside Village outdoor mall and a vintage downtown area with quaint shops and a Brooklyn-style pizza shop (Sam’s Pizza Pasta Subs; OK, that’s our family favorite) that surround a Babe’s Chicken Dinner House.

Further west, beyond the broadcast towers, is Lake Ridge, a 3,400-acre hillside planned community in which most homes, many upscale and custom, overlook Joe Pool Lake. Developed in 1985, Lake Ridge has 2,253 tracts and seven gated communities. High Pointe, a 40-year-old planned community in north Cedar Hill, has 2,757 tracts with four neighborhood parks.

The Cedar Hill area still has room for growth. Phoenix-based Walton, a real-estate investment and land asset management company, has acquired 400 acres in the Lake Ridge Parkway area where it will develop more than 1,100 single-family homesites.

For those who have a bigger budget, Lake Ridge has mansions, too. We profiled this one last year.

Cedar Hill is no secret around here. Now, America knows about it, too.