Real Estate

12 US metropolitan areas where homes are affordable relative to local income, according to SmartAsset

William Edwards

2024-05-21T09:07:01Z

The city skyline of Cleveland at dusk. — Cleveland. Sean Pavone/Shutterstock

SmartAsset identified 12 US cities and metropolitan areas with cheap home prices relative to local incomes.
Median home prices in these places are below $175,000, much lower than the US median.
But they're also cheap on a relative basis, with homes costing less than 2.5 years of income.

Are inflation, record home prices, and sky-high mortgage rates cutting into your ability to buy a home? One solution could be going where your money will go the furthest.

In a recent analysis, the financial-information site SmartAsset looked at median home prices and income data in cities and metropolitan areas around the US and came up with a list of places where home prices were cheapest relative to local incomes.

All of the places are fairly affordable on an absolute basis, with median home prices below $175,000 — much lower than the national median of $358,754, according to Zillow. But they're also the 12 areas where buyers can find the best bargains relative to local wages out of the 192 places SmartAsset analyzed.

In each of the 12 areas, home prices are no higher than 2.5 years' worth of local income. Some of the least affordable cities in the country include Flagstaff, Arizona, and Los Angeles, where home prices are almost 10 years' worth of wages.

To conduct the analysis, SmartAsset used data from Zillow for median home sale prices as of February 29. Income data is from the US Census Bureau from 2022 and is adjusted upward by 5.3% to reflect wage growth through March, in accordance with Federal Reserve data.

The 12 cities and metropolitan areas are listed below in ascending order of their relative home-price affordability.