This Small Town in New York Was Just Named the Best Place for First-time Home Buyers

Realtor.com recently released its list of the top 10 best places to own your first home — without breaking the bank.

With interest rates at a 20-year high, a low supply of homes, and high listing prices that have skyrocketed in recent years (the median home value is $417,700, up a whopping 37 percent since 2020), owning a home feels like a utopia for many.

However, there is some good news. Realtor.com released its annual report of the best markets for first-time homebuyers, highlighting under-the-radar destinations where real estate prices are affordable, and residents still enjoy a good standard of living. While the list comprises towns in most major regions of the country, they all have one thing in common: they are located relatively close to larger cities that offer job opportunities and more entertainment options.

The winner is Irondequoit, a lakefront town with a population of 51,000 and a suburb of Rochester in New York. The median listing price in this Lake Ontario community is just $187,000. The company forecasts that values in the metro area will grow by ten percent, the most out of any market on the list. The unemployment rate in the region is 3.6 percent, which is on par with the national average of 3.7 percent.

The second town on Realtor.com's list is Benton, Arkansas. Benton is home to 35,000 residents and is located about 25 miles southwest of the state's capital, Little Rock. The median listing price of a home is here $197,500. Prices here are expected to rise by three percent. The estimated average commute time to work is 25 minutes, with unemployment also at 3.6 percent.

Winterset in Iowa's Des Moines metro area is third, with a median home listing price of $269,400. That value is estimated to rise by almost ten percent in the general metro area. The town, which is the birthplace of actor John Wayne and has a museum dedicated to him, also has the highest number of businesses per thousand households of the top three markets, a measure indicating "the culture and liveliness of an area," according to Realtor.com.

Connecticut's Newington, a suburb of Hartford, is fourth with a median home price of $290,294, and Council Bluff in Iowa fifth, where the median price of homes is $200,000. Council Bluff also has the lowest unemployment rate out of all 10 markets on the list — just 2.8 percent.

For the report, Realtor.com considered over 2,700 markets within the largest metro areas nationally and then ranked those by affordability, investment growth, options to buy or inventory, commute time, and things to do. Of all ten markets, four are in the Northeast, and three are each in the South and Midwest, with no places in the West.

You can read Realtor.com's full report here.

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