Lawrence may be home to the third-ranked college basketball team in the nation, but the city’s home prices hold onto No. 4 on a list comparing properties appropriate for middle-management transferees.

And that’s just in the Big 12 North.

The average price this year for a Lawrence home with 2,200 square feet, four bedrooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms and a two-car garage in a “middle management community” is $247,450, according to the 2006 Coldwell Banker College Home Price Comparison Index. That places Kansas University’s municipality fourth among other communities that are home to Big 12 Conference schools.

Boulder, Colo., home to the University of Colorado, topped the list at $536,000. Next up were Ames, Iowa, home to Iowa State University, at $343,233, and Lincoln, Neb., home to the University of Nebraska, at $301,456.

Not that Gary Nuzum is complaining about being pushed into the North’s second division – in the residential market, anyway.

“On home prices I’d rather be No. 4 in the conference than No. 1,” said Nuzum, managing broker for Coldwell Banker McGrew Real Estate in Lawrence. “We’ll let Boulder keep the No. 1 house price. We’ll keep the No. 1 basketball team.”

Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp. compiled prices for such properties in 119 markets that are home to NCAA Division 1-A schools, then separated them into Top 10 lists for the most expensive and least expensive communities.

The Pac 10 Conference is home to four of the top five schools in the most expensive communities: Palo Alto, Calif. (Stanford University), $1.652 million; Los Angeles (UCLA and USC), at $1.565 million; and, at No. 5, Berkeley, Calif. (University of California at Berkeley), $1.275 million. In at No. 4 nationally was another California community: San Jose, home to San Jose State University, at $1.41 million.

Topping the “most affordable” list: Tulsa (University of Tulsa), $148,585; Hattiesburg, Miss. (University of Southern Mississippi), $151,225; Muncie, Ind. (Ball State University), $151,238; Fort Worth, Texas (Texas Christian University), $151,250; and Monroe, La. (University of Louisiana-Monroe), $153,271.

Lubbock, Texas, home to Texas Tech, was the lone Big 12 community to make either Top 10 list. Its average price of $158,225 ranked No. 8 for affordability.

Residential markets in Big 12 communities generally are undervalued, Nuzum said, citing a recent Wall Street Journal study that pegged Lawrence at 11 percent undervalued, while Boulder was 6 percent undervalued; some California communities were more than 70 percent overvalued.

Consider two more conference statistics: Big 12 average price, $253,481; Pac 10 average price, $812,632.

“We’re a bargain,” Nuzum said.