These Are the Best Cities for Solo First-Time Home Buyers
For plenty of people, the prospect of buying a home for the first time is daunting enough even with a partner to help foot the bill. But it's understandably even more intimidating when you're doing it on your own. However, as more and more folks wait longer to settle down, solo first-time home buyers are becoming increasingly common.
If you count yourself among that crowd and are curious where you should set your sights on picking up a piece of property, there's a brand new study out that reveals the most affordable cities for single people looking to buy a house.
The new list of best cities for first-time solo buyers comes from the team at Homes.com, who used a whole stack of data to determine the most affordable locales for buying property as a single person. To do it, they studied over 300 towns and cities around the United States with populations of 100,000 or more and consulted both median income figures and the median value of a one bedroom home in each. Then, they factored in the average monthly mortgage cost for each city (based on a 10% down payment and 3.5% interest rate), and ranked them all by the percentage of one's income that would go toward home ownership.
Topping the list as the best spot to buy on your own is Edison, New Jersey, where the median one-bedroom would cost you the equivalent of 8.78% of your income. Second on the list is Overland Park, Kansas, where the same would require 8.96% of your income, while Lafayette, Louisiana comes in as the third best spot with a median home costing the equivalent of 10.1% of your income. Here's how the top 20 most affordable cities break down.
20. Columbia, SC
19. Wichita, KS
18. Macon, GA
17. Evansville, IN
16. Norman, OK
15. Corpus Christi, TX
14. Beaumont, TX
13. Oklahoma City, OK
12. Sandy Springs, GA
11. Naperville, IL
10. Joliet, IL
9. Topeka, KS
8. Rochester, MN
7. Cedar Rapids, IA
6. Kansas City, KS
5. West Palm Beach, FL
4. Sterling Heights, MI
3. Lafayette, LA
2. Overland Park, KS
1. Edison, NJ
Besides figuring out the best areas for first time buyers, Homes.com also looked at the opposite by determining the least affordable cities to snag a one-bedroom on one income. Unsurprisingly, New York City topped that list, with Detroit coming in at number two, and Oxnard, California rounding out the top three. They also looked at affordability on a state level, and found Montana to be the best choice overall for a first-time solo purchaser (Kentucky, South Dakota, Rhode Island, and Idaho round out the top five, respectively).
Of course, the most affordable locales don't necessarily line up with the ones you'd be willing to up and move to. Though, if you're hoping to stay put in a pricier place, it may be helpful to come to terms with how much you need to earn there annually to buy a place.
Then again, if you're on the hunt with a partner, the list of affordable options looks a bit different.
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