AUBURN NO. 1 IN SEC

Well, Auburn fans, your Tigers are finally ranked No. 1.

That's right, according to this year's Coldwell Banker College Home Price Comparison Index, the Loveliest Village is the most expensive town in which to buy a home in the Southeastern Conference.

The annual College HPCI compares similarly sized 2,200-square-foot, four-bedroom, 2 1/2 bathroom homes in college towns which have Division I schools. The sample home in Auburn goes for $287,339, which ranks it 90th among the 117 markets. A home in Tuscaloosa goes for $206,267, which ranks the Tide 41st overall and eighth among SEC housing markets.

"This is our fourth year," said Coldwell Banker spokes-man David Siroty. "We wanted to talk about the affordability of homes across the country and college towns like Auburn and Tuscaloosa as iconic American communities.

"Besides, being a serious study, this was a lot of fun for us to do."

In this year's survey, Akron, Ohio (University of Akron of the Mid America Conference) is the most affordable college town, where a home costs $121,885. A house in Muncie, Ind., home of Ball State, also of the MAC, costs $144,996. The Big 10 is represented by Ann Arbor, Mich., home to the University of Michigan, as the third-most affordable college market with an average price of $148,000.

Palo Alto, Calif., the home of Stanford University, is No. 117 - or No. 1. It all depends on how you look at it. The sample home there costs $1,488,726. Southern California's hometown of Los Angeles comes in at $1,347,125 and next is Chestnut Hill (Boston), Mass., (Boston College) at $1,337,578.

Siroty said there are three groups that the index is geared toward.

"There are the parents whose child is going with friends, so they know them and, instead of paying rent, they buy a house - not a claptrap house, either," he said. "And there are those whose kids fall in love with the town, so they buy a condo and, instead of a beach house, they keep it in the family for football visits.

"Then, there's the baby boomers who have the desire to return to these idyllic towns. And we have found this to be the case time and time again."