Rising home prices and mortgage rates hovering around 7% have many buyers wondering if, where and when they can buy a home.
A study WalletHub released Monday found that the most affordable cities in the country to buy property are primarily in the Midwest. Nine of the top 10 least affordable cities are in California. New York was the outlier.
WalletHub compared a sample of 300 U.S. cities across various metrics with different weights. The three metrics given the highest priority were housing affordability, calculated by dividing the median house price by the median annual household income; maintenance affordability as a share of income; and the average cost of homeowner insurance coverage.
Flint and Detroit, Michigan, topped the list of most affordable cities for prospective home buyers. Flint has the lowest cost of living index in the country, according to WalletHub, and its home prices are accessible in relation to the median resident income level. Both Flint and Detroit offer a low median home price per square foot, $61 and $87, respectively, and their homes have a vacancy rate of 20%-plus, making it more of a buyer's market.
"To put that in perspective, the price in the most expensive cities is over $1,000 per square foot," the report said.
'California was already experiencing a housing crisis'
The wildfires that devastated Southern California in January further exacerbated housing issues in the area.
"Prior to the fires, California was already experiencing a housing crisis, with a mere 24 affordable and available homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households," the National Low Income Housing Coalition wrote in a memo in January. "On top of this, across LA County alone, there were already 75,000 people experiencing homelessness before the wildfires."