I just bought in South Anchorage. Looked in Eagle River as everyone told me it was cheaper/bigger. Ultimately just wanted to live in Anchorage more but I never saw the price difference. Prices were very comparable for similar sized houses. Additionally the newer homes up there were on the same tiny lots (5000sq ft) as the newer homes in Anchorage.

For what it's worth conventional wisdom was that cargo pilots live down South, easy commute to the airport. I'm military but hope to suck up for a job so hopefully we'll be neighbors. I bought my house off a JAL guy.

Downtown is extremely expensive. Gotten to the point that people buy a house just for the lot, tear down and start over. There are some awesome condos there though I didn't see anything that would be called a "high rise." My personal favorite was a little 4 unit townhome style, each unit had it's own personal glass elevator and started at $1.2M.

There's a new development just south of the airport, only a couple miles from cargo side. It's being built in an old gravel pit. I actually thought the houses looked nice but my realtor hated it, considering his firm was selling a lot of the houses there I figured he was worth listening to. There are some other established neighborhoods there that looked great, everything I saw was at least 500k. Much as I love airplanes I got turned off watching FedEx take off right over the houses. I heard it's not southflow there very often but it sure was the day I was in the neighborhood.