Henderson, Nevada, a city just south of Las Vegas, is the best city for first-time homebuyers, according to a new ranking published Monday by WalletHub, a personal finance website.
The list examined 300 U.S. cities and crunched data using 26 metrics, including housing affordability, real-estate tax rate and property crime rate.
“For people willing to take the risk to invest in a house this year, the search for a first home requires careful consideration of a number of factors,” Adam McCann, a financial writer at WalletHub said. “Buyers must balance what they want and need with what they can afford.
“Often, people begin searching for their dream homes without a realistic idea of market prices, interest rates or even their eligibility to get a mortgage.”
The ranking broke down the cities by a total score, as well as a second-ranking where the top cities were broken into large, midsize and smaller cities, to give consumers a better idea of the type of the city. It also broke down the rankings into separate categories to give consumers the best and worst city if they’re looking for the most affordable, lowest tax, best price-to-rent ratio city or a multitude of other metrics.
And while Henderson, Nevada was ranked the best city for first-time homebuyers, the ranking found that Berkeley, California, was the worst city for first-time homebuyers. Of the 10 worst cities for first-time homebuyers, seven were actually in California, with New York City, Miami and Detroit rounding out the bottom of the list.
See the full rankings breakdown on WalletHub.
