Shopping for a home is pricey, with common residence gross sales costs surging in recent times. However there are offers available when you’re keen to be versatile on geography. 

A variety of things contribute to the price of shopping for a house within the U.S., together with the worth of the home or condominium itself, upkeep prices, tax charges and extra.

The median residence gross sales value jumped from $313,000 within the first quarter of 2019, to $416,900 throughout the identical interval in 2025, in line with knowledge from the Federal Reserve Financial institution of St. Louis. Rates of interest have additionally shot up, with the common 30-year fastened mortgage fee now standing at near 7%, up from a file low of two.65% in January 2021. 

Excessive borrowing prices and restricted stock make it a difficult time to afford a house in quite a lot of U.S. cities, however there are metro areas the place the dream of residence possession could also be inside attain for potential patrons, in line with a brand new WalletHub examine.

Residence costs, upkeep and home-owner’s insurance coverage prices, plus a metropolis’s price of residing, its actual property tax fee, and residential stock, all contribute to a metropolis’s relative housing affordability. 

Listed here are essentially the most and least costly cities to purchase a house within the U.S.

Most inexpensive cities

Flint, Michigan, ranked Quantity One on WalletHub’s record of most inexpensive cities for homebuyers primarily based on an evaluation of 10 metrics, together with low price of residing and inexpensive residence costs relative to residents’ incomes. At $61 per sq. foot, Flint additionally boasts the bottom median residence value.

It is stock is sweet, too: Practically 21% of homes within the metropolis are vacant, making it a purchaser’s market and providing potential homebuyers loads of choices. 

Detroit, Michigan, is the second most inexpensive metropolis for homebuyers, in line with the examine, which in contrast prices throughout 300 U.S. cities. Median home costs are comparatively low, and over 22% of town’s housing is vacant. 

Pittsburgh ranked third-most inexpensive metropolis to purchase a home. Homebuyers there can get extra bang for his or her buck than renters. 

Least inexpensive cities

Against this, Santa Barbara, California, is the costliest metropolis within the U.S. for homebuyers, primarily due to its low housing affordability, amongst different components. Additionally in California, Santa Monica ranked 299th by way of housing affordability, whereas Berkeley ranked third to final. Berkeley has the bottom rent-to-price ratio of the 300 cities, which means its cheaper to lease there, than to purchase a house. 

Click on right here for the total rankings of the 300 most inexpensive cities to purchase a house in.