Slideshow This newly constructed home at 119 Tuscaloosa Ave. in Atherton sold for $35.3 million in November 2017. Listed by Natalie Comartin of Coldwell Banker the home has 7 bedrooms, 9.5 baths and is 20,375 square feet on a two-acre lot. (Photo from Redfin.com) This home at 178 Patricia Drive in Atherton on a one-acre lot is currently the town's most expensive listing, at $19.98 million. Alireza Faghiri of Alain Pinel is listing the 7-bedroom, 10-bath 12,500-square-foot newly constructed home. (Alain Pinel photo) Previous Next

It must have been a statistical anomaly -- after just one year of not being home to the country's most expensive residential real estate, Atherton is back on top of Forbes' annual list.

Atherton was first on the Forbes list of pricey real estate from 2013 through 2015, but at the end of 2016, Atherton fell to third place.

But the town is now back at the top of the Forbes list, released late in 2017, and is also atop a different list compiled by the PropertyShark website.

Forbes compiles its list each year by looking at the median (half higher, and half lower) listing price of homes on the market for a 90-day period near the end of the year. PropertyShark, which had Atherton second on its 2016 and 2017 lists, uses the median sales price for all residential transactions closed in a calendar year.

PropertyShark claims its list is more accurate because listing prices often do not match selling prices.