Buying a Home in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley: the Bowl, the Hillside, Eagle River, Girdwood, Palmer, Wasilla and Knik-Fairview

The first light snow on the Chugach peaks above Anchorage has its own name: termination dust. Construction crews coined it, because once it showed up on the mountains their season was about to be terminated, and the Anchorage Daily News traced the phrase back through its history last fall. It marks the end of summer, and the first days of the season after it bring the Permanent Fund Dividend, paid into bank accounts across the state on October 1. The Alaska Beacon reported that this year's is $1,200 for nearly 600,000 Alaskans, a $1,000 dividend plus a $200 energy relief payment.

I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in Alaska through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. I work from Bluffton, South Carolina, and I wrote this page for anyone thinking about buying a home in the Anchorage area. The Anchorage area is two boroughs: the Municipality of Anchorage, one government covering the Bowl, Eagle River, Chugiak and Girdwood, and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough up the Glenn Highway, where about three times as many homes get built each year. The Bowl is the flat ground between the Chugach front and the water of Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm, and it is the word planners use for the city proper. Locals call the Matanuska-Susitna Borough the Valley, or the Mat-Su, and I'll use both.

I go through the places first, then what is being built, the roads, the base, the schools and hospitals, and after that the things worth looking up on any address before you compare it with another. The facts come from public sources, linked where they appear, and most of them were gathered on October 1, 2026.

The Municipality of Anchorage, part by part

Eagle River, Chugiak and Girdwood are not separate towns. All three are parts of the Municipality of Anchorage, so a client comparing Eagle River with the Bowl is comparing two parts of the same taxing government. The three populated areas do not touch, either. The water utility describes its service area as three distinct geographic areas: the Northern Communities, the Anchorage Bowl and Girdwood Valley. JBER separates the Bowl from Eagle River and Chugiak, and about 40 highway miles separate the Bowl from Girdwood. Thirty-eight community councils represent neighborhoods across all of it, under a 1975 charter provision, and the Federation of Community Councils lists them. If you want to know what is planned for a neighborhood, its council's minutes are where it gets written down.

Downtown and the Park Strip

Block 41, the downtown block between 4th and 5th Avenues and F and G Streets, is a planned $200 million mix of offices, a hotel, shops, housing, parking and venues. The Fourth Avenue Theatre that stood on it was demolished, and a recreated facade is part of the plan, as Alaska Business Magazine reported.

The Tony Knowles Coastal Trail leaves from the west end of 5th Avenue beside Elderberry Park and runs about eleven miles, paved the whole way, out to Kincaid Park; the Municipality's trail maps show it. South Addition, next to downtown, is one of two areas where the Municipality's own data counts a large share of short-term rentals, and the rental section below has the rules.

Midtown, Spenard and East Anchorage

Midtown is where the Municipality is trying to turn a vacant lot on Fireweed Lane into workforce apartments through the Anchorage Community Development Authority, as the Anchorage Daily News reported in December 2025. In Spenard, Sofra Turkish Cuisine opened this year, run by siblings Zeynep and Engin Kilic, and the Spenard Farmers Market sets up on Saturdays from mid-May into September under the windmill on Spenard Road. On the east side, near Boniface Parkway, a multi-business market at 5305 East Northern Lights Boulevard holds El Green-Go's and Chugach Mountain Roasters. El Green-Go's opened there in spring 2026, according to the paper's Open & Shut column. The Alaska Native Heritage Center is off Muldoon Road on 26 acres, with indoor exhibits and outdoor village sites.

South Anchorage and the Hillside

South Anchorage takes in Klatt, Oceanview, Huffman and O'Malley, the Hillside, Rabbit Creek and the Turnagain Arm road down to Girdwood. The Hillside, on the slope below Chugach State Park, has nearly 7,000 residential lots with no municipal water or sewer. Most of them are larger than an acre, on private wells and on-site septic systems.

In 2010 the Assembly approved the Hillside District Plan, which set a fixed boundary for how far municipal water and sewer will extend in southeast Anchorage. The water utility says an extension past that boundary needs approval from both the Assembly and the Regulatory Commission of Alaska. So a one-acre lot on a well inside a city of about 287,000 is normal here, and the septic record matters. I wrote about how to confirm the system is approved for every bedroom before you write an offer.

Turnagain and the 1964 earthquake landslide

Turnagain, on the bluff above Knik Arm west of downtown, is where the largest of the five major landslides of the March 27, 1964 earthquake happened. The ground there is coarse glacial gravel over thick clay of the Bootlegger Cove Formation, and Earthquake Park on West Northern Lights Boulevard preserves the land that slid, with panels explaining what it did. In the areas it has mapped as most susceptible to earthquake-triggered landslides, the Municipality now requires a geotechnical study by ordinance, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's hazard map pamphlet. That is an engineer's study of the soil and ground under the lot, and some of those studies have found the areas being built on today to be stable. If you are looking at a home inside one of those mapped areas, the study is something to ask for early, and the insurance section below has the rest.

Eagle River and Chugiak

Eagle River is about 12 miles up the Glenn Highway from the Bowl, in the mouth of Eagle River Valley between JBER and Chugach State Park, and many JBER families live there. The Bear Paw Festival takes over downtown Eagle River for four days each mid-July, with races, a car show, carnival rides and the Slippery Salmon Olympics; Alaska's News Source covered the 40th one in 2025. Chugiak, further up the Old Glenn Highway, grew along with Eagle River from 14,800 to 25,067 people between 1980 and 1985 on the back of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Eklutna Village Historical Park, at the end of Eklutna Village Road, holds the painted spirit houses and St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, the oldest standing building in the greater Anchorage area.

A years-long effort called Eaglexit wants to detach Chugiak-Eagle River from the Municipality and form its own borough. The group filed its petition package with Local Boundary Commission staff on November 17, 2025, got it back with comments in January 2026, and started gathering signatures at Bear Paw in July 2026, as Alaska Public Media reported. As of early October nothing had been granted, and no one's taxes or services had changed. If you buy there, it is worth checking where the petition stands, because a new borough would be a new taxing government.

Girdwood

Girdwood is about 40 miles down the Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm, at the base of Alyeska Resort, and it is still inside the Municipality. It has its own tax structure for municipal services and its own Board of Supervisors, whose 2026 budget packet lays the rates out. About a quarter of Girdwood's homes are vacation rentals, against about 1% of residential properties in the rest of Anchorage, according to the Board's own written statement to the Assembly.

Holtan Hills, on 60 wooded acres northwest of the resort, is the biggest development there in decades. The Assembly approved it in January 2024, and road, walkway and utility work through the rainforest above Glacier Creek began in September 2025, as the Anchorage Daily News reported. Phase 1 prepares 50 sites for homes, duplexes and townhomes, plus two multifamily lots that could add about 20 units.

The Valley: Palmer, Wasilla, Knik-Fairview and up the Parks Highway

Most Valley residents do not live inside a city at all. Knik-Fairview, along Knik-Goose Bay Road southwest of Wasilla, is a census-designated place with no city government, no city tax and no city services. At 19,297 people in the 2020 census it was the most populous census-designated place in Alaska, more than Palmer and Wasilla combined, and the estimate for July 2025 was 20,689. Palmer, the borough seat, had 6,626 people in 2024, and Wasilla, the largest city in the borough, had 10,318. The borough as a whole is the second most populous in Alaska.

Alaska Public Media reported in May 2026 that it has grown 18% since 2015 while much of the rest of the state lost people. Economists point to less expensive homes and land than Anchorage, and to residents who commute to the city for higher-paying work.

Downtown Palmer has the Friday Fling from mid-May into August, with growers, makers and live music. Wasilla has the Iditarod headquarters on Knik-Goose Bay Road, with a museum and sled dogs on the grounds.

The race's official restart is on Willow Lake, the first Sunday in March, with mushers leaving the chute at 2 p.m. Alaska Public Media noted that the restart has been held in Willow the last two years because Wasilla did not have enough snow. Big Lake, off Mile 52.3 of the Parks Highway, has 50 miles of shoreline and was first homesteaded in 1916, and the 1890s Iditarod Trail to Nome passed about two miles south of it.

New construction, and why the Valley builds three times as much

State data shows three times as many homes built each year in the Mat-Su as in Anchorage, and Alaska Public Media laid out the reasons in September 2026. In the article's own terms, there is a shortage of good land in the Anchorage Bowl, so new housing there means redeveloping existing properties at far higher cost than open land. The Valley has more land, different soils and far fewer building rules. The article put the difference this way: "In Anchorage and a handful of cities, you'll deal with a full local code, arctic foundation rules, and Seismic Design Category E. Drive an hour out into the Mat-Su Valley or most of the Interior and you can pour a foundation without anyone signing off on it." Seismic Design Category E is the building code's name for some of its strictest earthquake standards, and Anchorage builds to them.

In Anchorage, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance set a goal in April 2025 of 10,000 homes in 10 years. The Municipality permitted about 300 dwelling units in 2024, more than 400 in 2025, and 330 through the first part of 2026, per Your Alaska Link. The rules have been changing to make building easier.

Parking minimums were eliminated citywide, effective January 22, 2023. The HOME Initiative made duplexes a permitted use in every residential zoning district, and since 2024 a lot in Anchorage can hold a duplex plus an accessory dwelling unit. The American Planning Association wrote that up as the end of single-family-only zoning in the city. In spring 2026 the Municipality began handing out free, already plan-reviewed designs for an accessory dwelling unit, a second small home on your own lot. The Williwaw is an 811-square-foot one-bedroom over a two-car garage, and the Nearpoint is a 460-square-foot one-bedroom with a flex room. Both names are local: a williwaw is a sudden downslope wind, and Near Point is a Chugach summit above town.

A bigger zoning change, the Missing Middle Housing Opportunity Overlay, or MMHOP, is AO 2026-85. It would allow duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, cottage courts and townhomes along the transit corridors in the Anchorage 2040 Land Use Plan. It passed the Planning and Zoning Commission in October 2025 and drew a packed Assembly hearing on September 15, 2026, with public testimony continued to October 6, as Alaska Public Media explained. It was still before the Assembly when these facts were gathered, so please check where it stands before you count on it.

The Valley is the other extreme. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough has no residential building code, as the Anchorage Press reported, with no required permit for the dwelling itself and little enforcement. Zoning still applies in places, and the City of Houston publishes its own new-construction requirements. The borough had 4,350 homes built or permitted from 2020 to 2024, 990 of them in multifamily buildings, according to Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. In 2026 an Assembly member proposed requiring a public hearing and a permit before most new duplexes and multifamily buildings, and the Assembly voted it down 5-2 after the Planning Commission called it a new barrier to building homes.

For you, the practical difference is who checked the work. A newly built Anchorage home has been through plan review and inspections, and it was built to the earthquake standards and the arctic foundation rules in the Municipality's code. A Valley home may have had none of that, so the inspection you pay for is doing the job a borough inspector would do elsewhere, and it is worth choosing that inspector with care.

The Glenn Highway rebuild and the other road work

Everyday travel between the Valley and Anchorage runs on one road, the Glenn Highway. About a third of Mat-Su's residents, roughly 39,000 people, drive it to work in Anchorage, about 45 minutes each way. Alaska Public Media reported that figure in a story on a commuter-rail pilot that advocates are pushing and nobody has funded yet.

That one road is about to be rebuilt. The Glenn Highway Rehabilitation covers 33 miles from Airport Heights Drive in Anchorage to the Parks Highway Interchange in Palmer: resurfacing, culvert replacement, longer on-ramps and bridge repairs, in three stages from 2026 to 2031. State officials' own words to the Mat-Su Sentinel about the disruption were "Expect it to be bad" when they asked for public input on the work. If you are buying in the Valley to commute to the city, you are buying into that construction window, and the drive is worth timing yourself on a weekday before you decide.

The Valley has its own road work. Knik-Goose Bay Road, which everyone calls KGB Road, is the spine of Knik-Fairview. The state is rebuilding it as a four-lane divided road from Centaur Avenue to Settler's Bay, 8.1 miles, on an estimated schedule of July 2026 to June 2031. The plan includes a separated path, rumble strips and what the state's budget document calls "reduced or combined access points," so fewer driveways and side streets will open straight onto it. The first contract, $54.5 million to Granite Construction, covers about four miles from Centaur Avenue to West Fairview Loop.

In Wasilla, a $3.5 million median on the Parks Highway will block left turns for about 1.5 miles between the Palmer-Wasilla Highway intersection and Broadview Avenue, with work likely running into 2027. If you are looking at a home with frontage on KGB Road or that stretch of the Parks, how you will get in and out of the driveway is a question worth asking.

On the Seward Highway, the state has proposed a $1.5 billion project to rebuild the road between Anchorage and Girdwood. The state says it is about safety, and critics have called it a boondoggle, as Alaska Public Media put it in August 2026, so it is still a proposal, with plenty of disagreement around it.

JBER, the airport and the port

Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is why so many home loans in Anchorage are VA loans. Of the metro's 4,708 home-purchase loans in 2024, 1,269 were VA loans, the most of any metro in Alaska, by the federal count of mortgages that lenders report each year. The base's Air Force side, JBER-Elmendorf, is home to the 3rd Wing, flying F-22 Raptors, C-17 Globemaster IIIs and E-3 Sentry aircraft.

A multi-year $7 billion overhaul called Fightertown Recapitalization is coming, with more than $2 billion in federal money to be spent at JBER next year. Military.com reported that at a September 18 budget work session, city leaders, Assembly members and JBER officials heard a projection of some 2,500 new service members and their families relocating here. There is only enough on-base housing, barracks and dorms for junior personnel, and the same story says the JBER commander, Danier Werner, does not expect an increase in the Basic Allowance for Housing for them. If you are coming on orders, how VA loans work in Alaska covers the Alaska-specific charge VA lists for this state, along with your entitlement and the funding fee.

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is now the busiest cargo airport in the United States and the third busiest in the world, handling nearly 3.9 million tonnes in 2025, up 40% since 2019, per Alaska Business Magazine. It accounts for one in ten Anchorage jobs. Down at the water, the Don Young Port of Alaska began replacing Cargo Terminal 1 in March 2026, roughly $807 million of a $2.75 billion modernization running about a decade, as the Anchorage Daily News reported. It is the state's main inbound cargo gateway.

The state's 2026 forecast has Anchorage adding about 1,200 jobs, led by transportation, tourism, health care and construction, and Mat-Su adding about 400. Providence, with about 4,000 employees in Alaska, and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, with more than 3,700, are two of the largest employers in town. Alaska Native corporations and Tribal health organizations are major employers in Anchorage.

Schools: the closures and the April 2026 bond vote

Both school districts closed schools in 2026, for different reasons. The Anchorage School District closed Fire Lake Elementary in Eagle River, Lake Otis Elementary and Campbell STEM Elementary at the end of the 2025-26 school year, with the board voting on February 24. Enrollment fell 15% from 2010 to 2025, 7,487 fewer students, and once these three close the district will have closed eight schools in ten years, as the Anchorage Daily News reported.

On the April 7, 2026 ballot, Proposition 1, a $79 million bond for school improvements, failed 32,657 to 33,207, while Proposition 2, $38 million for roads and drainage, passed 40,177 to 25,757. Both were bonds, borrowing that gets repaid through property tax, so that pair of results tells you what the levy will and will not be paying for over the next few years.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, with 49 schools and about 19,400 students, closed Larson, Meadow Lakes and Glacier View elementary schools, its first closures in more than a decade. The Borough Assembly adopted a $470 million FY2027 budget that did not include the money to keep them open, against a district shortfall reported at $22.5 million, per the Mat-Su Sentinel. In the same year a $58 million ballot measure was proposed to build campuses for three charter schools. If a particular school matters to your decision, the district's current attendance map for the address is the thing to check, because lines move when buildings close.

Hospitals in Anchorage and the Valley

Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage is the state's largest hospital and a trauma center for adults and children. The Alaska Native Medical Center is run by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the largest Tribal health organization in the country, with field clinics in communities statewide. Alaska Regional Hospital, an HCA hospital, is the third hospital in the city.

In the Valley, Mat-Su Regional Medical Center has 125 beds and is a member of the Mayo Clinic Care Network. It is building a 45-bed inpatient psychiatric hospital in Palmer of about 50,000 square feet, set to open in 2028 and taking the system from 16 inpatient mental-health beds to 45, per the Frontiersman. One 125-bed hospital serves a borough that has added more than 7,400 adults since 2020, by Alaska Housing's count, which is worth knowing if you are choosing between a Valley address and one closer to the three Anchorage hospitals.

Property tax in the Municipality and the Valley

Alaska has no state income tax, no state sales tax and no statewide property tax, so property tax is a borough matter. Anchorage's 2026 general government levy averages 8.97 mills, per the Assembly's levy ordinance, and the rate varies by parcel. A mill is one dollar of tax for every $1,000 of taxable assessed value, so 8.97 mills is $897 per $100,000. The Residential Exemption takes 40% of the assessed value off the top, up to $75,000, for a home you own and live in as your primary residence, and the Municipality's exemption page gives March 15 as the application deadline. That is the current rule. It was raised in 2023 from 20% up to $50,000, and the older figures still turn up online.

Residents 65 and older can have up to $150,000 of assessed value exempt on the home they live in. Girdwood has its own structure for municipal services, as above.

In the Valley there is no single mill rate you can look up. The borough's areawide rate for FY26 came down from 8.748 to 8.485 mills, and the non-areawide rate, which applies outside the cities, is 0.371 mills. On top of those a home pays its Road Service Area rate. The borough has 16 active Road Service Areas, each with a rate the Assembly sets every year during the budget. Then there is any fire service area, and the city rate if the home is inside Palmer, Wasilla or Houston.

The borough's budget release also notes that even with the rate cut, the average areawide bill rose about $62, on an average assessed value of $388,087, because values went up. So two Valley homes a mile apart can carry different total rates, and the reliable way to compare them is to pull the actual bill for each parcel from the borough rather than multiply by one number. Alaska charges no state real estate transfer tax, and the Alaska page covers recording districts, who conducts a closing here, and the rule that stops anyone from discounting your settlement charges.

Earthquake, flood and the coverage you buy separately

A standard Alaska homeowners policy does not cover earthquake, and it does not cover flood. Anchorage has both, the ground that slid at Turnagain in the 1964 earthquake and the Chester Creek and Campbell Creek floodplains, so each one is a separate purchase here. Earthquake coverage comes as its own policy or as an add-on to your homeowners policy, which insurers call an endorsement. Its deductible is a percentage of the coverage limit, typically 10% to 20%, rather than a flat dollar amount. On a large coverage limit that percentage is a large number, and it is the part worth going over with your insurance agent. Published premium figures for it vary too widely to be useful, so please get a quote on the actual home.

The Municipality participates in the National Flood Insurance Program. Its flood hazard page counts close to 10,000 acres of floodplain and more than 3,500 parcels partly or entirely in it, along Chester Creek, Campbell Creek and Little Campbell Creek among others. FEMA's digital flood map for Anchorage dates to 2009, and a FEMA and State of Alaska study to update the mapping began in 2013. If a home is in FEMA's high-risk zone, called the Special Flood Hazard Area, the lender will require flood insurance, and the premium becomes part of your monthly payment. I walk through pricing that in before you make an offer in buying a home in a flood zone.

A home outside the flood zone can still be inside a mapped landslide zone, so both maps are worth checking. The Municipality published its Seismically Induced Ground Failure Maps in July 2021, and the geotechnical study of the ground under a lot, mentioned in the Turnagain section, is required inside the zones they show. Anchorage builds to some of the strictest earthquake standards in the building code, and the Municipality's code handout sets minimum footing depths against frost and minimum roof snow loads, so those are items an inspector here looks at.

Heating, water and septic

Most of Southcentral Alaska, the region that takes in Anchorage, the Mat-Su and the Kenai Peninsula, heats with natural gas from the Cook Inlet basin, and that gas is running short. Enstar's president, John Sims, told legislators the utility was 18 days short of supply for the coming winter, assuming normal temperatures, and that bills are likely to rise for the next few winters. Alaska Public Media reported his figures in July 2026. Imported LNG, which is liquefied natural gas shipped in, was running about $22 per MCF, the industry's unit for a thousand cubic feet, against the $10.80 the utility pays today. The fix is an import terminal at Nikiski, with gas delivery targeted for 2029.

Heating is a real part of the cost of owning here, so when you compare two homes, their heating bills and energy ratings belong next to the taxes. Alaska Housing's energy rating can even change the rate on one of its loans, which I explain in whether an Alaska energy rating can lower your mortgage rate.

Water and sewer in Anchorage come from the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility, which serves nearly 50,000 homes across the Northern Communities, the Bowl and Girdwood Valley, and service is not available everywhere inside its boundary. The Hillside's 7,000 well-and-septic lots are described above. In the Valley, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation regulates septic systems statewide under 18 AAC 72: a site evaluation by an approved evaluator, a design, then a permit that typically takes several weeks. The rules put the drainfield 100 feet from a drinking-water well and 100 feet from surface water. A conventional gravity system suits the Valley's well-drained soils in areas without permafrost or a high water table, so those two conditions are the questions to ask about any raw Valley lot.

Short-term rentals and associations

Since July 31, 2026, anyone in the Municipality renting a home, apartment, condo or bedroom for fewer than 30 consecutive days has had to register it with the city. Registration is free and online, under AO 2025-115, which the Assembly passed 10-2 in December 2025. A proposed 5% tax on vacation-rental stays failed 8-4 at the same meeting, as the Anchorage Daily News reported, and the city's 12% bed tax already applies.

The city's own data shows Girdwood and South Addition with the largest numbers of these rentals. Keith McCormick, the Assembly member for Girdwood and South Anchorage, described the registration as "a prerequisite to further taxation and restrictions" when it passed. If rental income is part of your plan, the rules are moving, and the way you intend to use the home also changes how the loan is written, so please tell me early.

If you are looking at a condo or a home with an association, the owners elect a board that runs the community and pays its shared costs with dues charged to every owner, which the law calls assessments. The law behind that is the Alaska Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, AS 34.08, for condominiums, cooperatives and planned communities created after January 1, 1986. An older condominium may be outside that act, which is a question for the documents. No community's dues or fees are quoted on this page. Those come from the association's own resale documents, and they are part of the monthly payment you qualify on.

Local words you will hear

• The Valley, or the Mat-Su: the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. Palmer, Wasilla, Big Lake, Willow and everything in between.
• Southcentral: one word, the region between the Gulf of Alaska and the Alaska Range: Anchorage, the Mat-Su, Kodiak, Valdez and the Kenai Peninsula.
• The Bowl: the Anchorage city proper, the flat ground between the mountains and the two arms of Cook Inlet.
• Break-up: the end of winter, when the river ice goes and the snow starts to melt. Alaskans call it the fifth season.
• The Glenn, the Seward, the Parks: the Glenn Highway, the Seward Highway and the Parks Highway, which is how the state's own road notices name them.
• KGB Road: Knik-Goose Bay Road, through Knik-Fairview.
• RSA: a Road Service Area, a Valley taxing district with its own annual mill rate.
• PFD: the Permanent Fund Dividend, paid each October.

The loan limits here, and the rest of your payment

The conforming limit is the largest loan Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will buy, and a loan above it is called a jumbo loan. The 2026 conforming and FHA limits for both boroughs are in the box below this article. Federal law gives Alaska a special, higher conforming limit, so every borough in the state carries the national conforming ceiling of $1,249,125, the same figure as San Francisco. The FHA limit in both Anchorage and Mat-Su is the national floor of $541,287. So a loan above $541,287 and up to $1,249,125 can still be a conventional loan here, but it cannot be an FHA loan. Conforming versus jumbo loans explains what changes when a loan crosses that line. A veteran with full entitlement has no VA loan limit at all.

Property tax, homeowners insurance, earthquake and flood coverage if you carry them, and any association dues are all part of the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on. Heating is not in that payment, but you will feel it every month, so it belongs in your own budget alongside the rest. Pre-approval in Alaska covers what the letter is based on. Once you're ready, you can run your numbers for an Anchorage or Valley purchase: rates for your scenario and Alaska closing costs, with no credit pull and no account. Choose the option that works best for you, and the application opens from there.

Nothing here is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and it is not tax advice. The value the assessor puts on a specific parcel, and which exemptions apply to it, are set by the Municipality or the borough, so please confirm them with that office.

Common questions

Is Eagle River part of Anchorage?

Yes. Eagle River, Chugiak and Girdwood are all parts of the Municipality of Anchorage, so a home in Eagle River is in the same taxing government as a home in the Bowl. JBER separates Eagle River from the Bowl, about 12 miles up the Glenn Highway. A group called Eaglexit has petitioned to detach Chugiak-Eagle River as its own borough, and as of early October 2026 nothing had been granted.

Is Wasilla in the Anchorage metro area?

Yes. The Anchorage metro area is the Municipality of Anchorage plus the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which holds Palmer, Wasilla, Knik-Fairview, Big Lake, Willow and Talkeetna. Locals call the borough the Valley or the Mat-Su. The two are connected by one road, the Glenn Highway, and about a third of Valley residents commute to Anchorage for work.

Does the Mat-Su Borough have a building code?

No. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough has no residential building code, so a home there may have been built with no permit for the dwelling and no borough inspection. Zoning can still apply, and the City of Houston has its own new-construction requirements. Anchorage builds to a full local code, arctic foundation rules and some of the strictest earthquake standards in the building code, which the code calls Seismic Design Category E. So the inspection you order on a Valley home is doing work a borough inspector never did.

Why does the Glenn Highway matter if I buy in the Valley?

It is the only major road between the Valley and Anchorage, and roughly 39,000 Valley residents drive it to work in the city. The state is rehabilitating 33 miles of it, from Airport Heights Drive in Anchorage to the Parks Highway Interchange in Palmer, in three stages from 2026 to 2031. If you plan to commute, you are buying into that construction window.

Does homeowners insurance in Anchorage cover earthquakes?

A standard policy does not, and it does not cover flood either. Earthquake coverage is bought separately, as its own policy or as an add-on to your homeowners policy, and its deductible is a percentage of the coverage limit, typically 10% to 20%, rather than a flat amount. Flood insurance is a separate policy too, and a lender requires it on a home in FEMA's Special Flood Hazard Area.

Is there one property tax rate for the Mat-Su Valley?

No. A Valley home pays the borough's areawide rate, plus the non-areawide rate if it is outside a city, plus its Road Service Area rate, which the Assembly sets each year for each of the 16 active areas. A fire service area rate and a city rate, inside Palmer, Wasilla or Houston, can be added on top. Two homes a mile apart can carry different totals, and the reliable way to compare them is to pull the actual bill for each parcel from the borough.

Do I have to register a short-term rental in Anchorage?

Yes. Since July 31, 2026, any unit in the Municipality rented for fewer than 30 consecutive days has to be registered with the city, and registration is free and online. The city's bed tax applies to those stays. A proposed separate tax on vacation-rental stays failed at the Assembly in December 2025, and the Assembly member for Girdwood called registration a first step toward further rules, so please check the current ordinance before you count on rental income.