3 of the Cheapest Places to Buy a House

Dave:
According to a 2024 bank rate survey, a whopping 78% of aspiring homeowners in the US say they can’t afford a home. And nearly half of Americans cannot afford a $250,000 home, which is well less than the national average. And this housing affordability challenge often gets framed as a crisis, and in a lot of ways it is. It can feel really enormous and often insurmountable. But today we’re going to use some original research we’ve done here at BiggerPockets to shine a light on some of the US markets that are still affordable. Hey everyone, it’s Dave. Welcome to On the Market for today’s conversation about affordability, why it’s important and what markets are still affordable. We have two great experts for you. First is of course, Kathy Fettke, who I think we share a love of affordable markets. Kathy, that’s something that unites our market analysis. So thanks for being here today.

Kathy:
This is my favorite topic, finding affordable markets that are right on the verge of growing.

Dave:
And to help Kathy and I, we’re going to be bringing on BiggerPockets own market intelligence. His name is Austin Wolff, if you haven’t heard, he was on a show a couple of weeks ago just talking about housing supply. And his whole job is to understand the housing market. And when he finds something really cool, he comes on the podcast and talks about it. And so that’s what we’re going to be doing today. Specifically, Austin’s going to share with Kathy and I and all of you, the metrics he uses to understand and study housing affordability, how the US compares to other countries in terms of relative housing affordability. And of course we’ll get into which US cities are the most affordable and are actually growing and have strong fundamentals according to Austin’s research. So let’s dive in. Austin Wolff, welcome back to On the Market. Thanks for joining us again.

Austin:
Thank you. Happy to be here.

Dave:
It’s great to have you. And I just need to shout you out quickly because between Austin’s last appearance on the show, which was like two weeks ago maybe, and right now Austin bought his first deal. He drove across the country and bought a house in Henry’s backyard, not actually his backyard, but in Arkansas. And it’s starting to house hack. So Austin, congratulations on getting your first deal.

Austin:
Thank you very much. I’ll be talking about it on the Rookie Show as well tomorrow, so that’ll be exciting.

Dave:
Oh wow. You’re becoming famous rapidly. I love it. Alright, so today we are here to talk about affordability. And before we get into some of the research and data, Kathy, let’s just start with you. Why do you think affordability continues to be one of the more important metrics in the housing market that we as investors should be following?

Kathy:
Oh my goodness. Yeah. It’s one of the four pillars that I always look at. I look at job growth, population growth and affordability, and then infrastructure growth. And why affordability? Well, you need people to have real estate work. That’s the bottom line. And if it’s out of reach, then the market gets kind of stuck. However, with that said, I’m born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. I live in the Los Angeles area now, and I don’t think there’s ever been a time that affordability was a thing. So we’ve just kind of learned to deal with it. And you get creative and you house hack. And when we first bought, we had lots of people living in our home. So people find a way, but it really just comes down to the numbers.

Dave:
Absolutely, yeah. And I think that’s true that affordability doesn’t necessarily indicate that it’s going to be the fastest growing market. I mean, you look at markets that are historically unaffordable like San Francisco or Los Angeles, and somehow they keep growing. There’ve been setbacks from time to time, but overall they’ve been growing. But I think affordability matters a lot to me personally. In my investing, one for rent stability and rent growth. There’s only a certain amount of rent that people can afford. And if you live in a relatively affordable market, then rents can continue to grow. And I think right now, given where we are in the country, that affordability is going to make a big difference on housing demand. You read all these things about how Gen Z, they’re starting to get into home buying age and they can’t afford homes. More and more of them are living at home. And so if you are operating in markets that are relatively more affordable, then you might have more demand. And lastly, and I think we’re going to talk about this today, it also matters for as investors how much housing you can afford and how many properties you can afford to buy. It’s not just about your tenant’s affordability or home buyer’s affordability, but your affordability as investor as well, Austin, that’s what we’re talking about, right? That’s correct. Okay. So Austin, when we’re talking about affordability in this episode, how are we going to be measuring it?

Austin:
We use it using a metric called the price to wage ratio, where we just take the median home price for a given market and divide it by the median household income for a given market, hence price to wage ratio.

Dave:
Awesome. Okay, great. I love that. That’s simple. Just so everyone knows there are other ways to measure affordability. Sometimes they take into account mortgage rates. You may have heard that affordability is at afford or low, that’s largely due to mortgage rates. But I think Austin, correct me if I’m wrong, the reason we’re going to use this price to wage ratio is because it allows us just to compare city to city because mortgage rates largely the same from state to state, market to market. And this allows us to get some sort of broader context about cities, how affordable cities are relative to one another.

Austin:
That’s correct.

Dave:
Alright, so what timeline are you looking at for the US price to wage ratio?

Austin:
I actually took snapshots from different years to see how affordability has changed over time. So I went as far back as 1984 just so I could get a good 40 year snapshot of what it was like 40 years ago. And the price to wage ratio back then was about three and a half. So homes there on average were about three and a half times the annual wage. Now today in 20 24, 40 years later, the national average price to wage ratio is about seven. So homes on average are about seven times household income. And of course some markets are going to be lower than seven and some markets are going to be a lot higher than seven. So we can see a trend where affordability is decreasing over time, and we can certainly talk later in the episode about what we can do about that. But for now, that’s certainly where we stand

Kathy:
And that’s a huge problem because banks tend to look at that too. They’re not going to be lending at a seven X, so that’s a huge issue. Have we seen this before? Have we seen the difference like this so high in the past

Austin:
In America, if we’re removing the impact of interest rates on a mortgage, we have, this is the most unaffordable market in US history if we don’t account for the very high interest rates that the late seventies and the eighties had.

Dave:
So you’re not crazy if you’re looking at deals and you feel like everything is really unaffordable. There you have it. This is one of the, it sounds like absent mortgage rates the worst time in terms of affordability in the us. So we know affordability is a real problem and this affordability gap or price to wage ratio has been widening over several decades. But how does the US stack up against other countries? What markets still offer affordability in the us? We’ll get to that right after the break.

Kathy:
Hey friends, welcome back to on the market. Let’s jump back into our conversation on affordability with analyst Austin Wolf.

Dave:
So tell us, Austin, you said the situation in the United States. I’ve looked a little bit into international investing, but how does the US compare affordability wise? Is this an American phenomenon or a global one?

Austin:
American affordability is still actually better than most countries in the world. So if we just look at a few other developed nations, Germany, the price to wage ratio is about nine. Japan is 10, South Korea is 19 China, which some people may argue that parts of it are still developing, but China has a 29 What price to wage ratio? Oh my, yes. Oh my god, it’s insane. So America, there are very few countries that are actually better than America when it comes to affordability. Switzerland and Luxembourg are two that I can name off the top of my head, but

Dave:
Well, those are the most expensive places in the world if having been there. My brother-in-law lives there. It is so expensive to go to Switzerland.

Austin:
So America is actually doing pretty well with respect to affordability. Even though it has decreased over the past 40 years, it’s still better than most countries. So we still have it pretty good over here

Kathy:
And we have superior loans. A lot of people don’t realize that the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is really unique to America to have a fixed rate. I mean, there’s very few other countries that have that. So you add that into the equation that maybe it hurts a lot in the beginning to get into the property, but over time you’re going to be in the winner’s circle as inflation happens, but you’re on that fixed rate. Austin, I love how you’ve gotten around the affordability issue. At the end of the day, there are ways to get into real estate and you found a way to leave a very expensive market, find a more affordable market and buy your first property. It’s awesome.

Austin:
Thank you. Yeah, the reality that I’m sure a lot of new investors are facing is if you got started before the interest rate hike in 2022 and before prices also were hiked as well across many major markets, you’re doing pretty good right now. If you’re getting started after 2022, it is very, very, very hard for you. And so I certainly feel for every new investor out there, the reality is it’s likely not going to get better at least anytime soon. So I would rather own a property now than 10 years from now because I think affordability is still going to decline. The price wage ratio is going to increase as the years go on. So it is another reason to get started in real estate as soon as you financially can and as soon as financially is responsible.

Dave:
I think your story, Austin, is a pretty good example of the affordability issues in the United States because my understanding, I’ve looked at some of these lists, I think you’ve probably looked at the same ones, Austin, where you look at different metro areas and how they stack up. Affordability wise, the US is very polarized. You have some of the most affordable cities in the whole world are in the United States, and also the least affordable cities I think are in Canada or New Zealand or Hong Kong maybe, but they’re also in the United States, places like San Francisco and Los Angeles ranked there. And so although want to just call out that the US on average does pretty well compared to a lot of the international comps. Austin was offering that there are sort of both extremes as Austin’s own story represents. As Kathy said, he went from a really less affordable market like Los Angeles and went to Arkansas. But I actually wanted to ask you, Kathy, do you know, I’m going to quiz you. Do you know what the most affordable city in the world is for real estate investing

Kathy:
In the world?

Dave:
I’m asking you because I don’t know if you currently still invest there, but I know you have in the past.

Kathy:
Oh, maybe it’s either in Birmingham or let’s just say Texas, north Texas.

Dave:
It’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

Kathy:
Pittsburgh, what in the whole world?

Dave:
Yeah, it has a great job market and houses are still really cheap there. But I wanted to ask you, I was waiting until this episode to ask you, you sold your properties in Pittsburgh, right?

Kathy:
Yeah, well we sold one and we probably sold it for too little and now we have another on the market that we will see. We’ll see how it goes, but it has doubled in value since we bought it.

Dave:
Okay. Austin, let’s go back to you. Let’s talk about some of these US markets. So I just mentioned the most affordable one, but what are some of the least affordable cities in the us?

Austin:
One of the least affordable cities in the United States right now is Santa Cruz, California. And for anyone that hasn’t been there, it’s a very beautiful place. You have the ocean and you also have the trees and the mountains right there. It’s a college town, so it has a sort of hip vibe. But the issue is because it’s mostly a college town and also doubles as a vacation town, there isn’t a lot of high paying jobs there compared to what you can get in San Francisco or San Jose. And so the price to wage ratio is outrageous. It’s about 18 and a half. Whoa. Which is more than double the national average. So that’s crazy. I was reading

Dave:
Some article about some town where there’s no student housing and the kids are all living in cars in Vans, wasn’t it? Is it Santa Cruz?

Austin:
That’s a great question. Haven’t

Dave:
I’m going to look this

Austin:
Up. I don’t know that news article. I have seen some apartment buildings there that some students live in, so Okay. There’s a lot of fans and people living in cars as

Kathy:
Well. Yeah, my nephews live in Santa Cruz because they’re surf bums and they do live in their van. They have a friend who has land and they just kind rent out a spot for your RV or your van. That’s what you pay, and they have a little shower you could use.

Austin:
That’s awesome.

Kathy:
So like I said, in these very expensive markets, people still find a way to live there. It’s maybe not as luxurious as and three bedroom home in Arkansas that you can afford. That’s

Austin:
Right. Others on the list that I just want to point out are Flagstaff, Arizona. This is one market that I’ve been visiting since I was a kid because we lived in Phoenix, and when you want to get away from the heat, you go to Flagstaff, two hours north, nice mountain town. Again, college vibe. There’s skiing to do in the winter. Also a very large college there as well. And I always thought that it was a good place to invest just for appreciation, even way back when, 10, 15 years ago, just because I visited it. I know the market and it just so happens it was one of the top 15 highest appreciating markets in the past five years. And unfortunately because it’s also a college town slash vacation market where there aren’t a lot of high paying jobs, it is also now one of the most unaffordable markets in the country with about a 16 price to wage ratio still double than the national average.

Dave:
Got it. So I’m just going to make a guess here, Austin, but are most of the most least affordable markets on the west coast

Austin:
Or New York? Everyone but Ocean City, ocean City, New Jersey and New York are the ones on the east coast. But yeah, mostly west coast. You guessed it.

Dave:
All right. Well, I sort of stole your thunder here, Austin, the most affordable markets, and I think I mentioned Pittsburgh, maybe the largest total metro area, but I think you’ve looked at it on a more even granular level. So what are some of the more affordable areas or specific markets in the country?

Austin:
There’s a lot of affordable markets that I’ve never heard of and viewers may never heard of either unless you live around those certain areas. Danville, Illinois, I haven’t heard of personally never heard of it. So after going through that list of most affordable markets, and again, most of these markets are extremely small, I wanted to then look at what are markets that are affordable but are also growing. So at first what I did was I took all of the markets where the price to wage ratio was less than the national average, and then they had to have population and job growth greater than 0% as well as wage growth greater than 0%. I want to make sure that wages aren’t going backwards. I want to make sure that they have grown in the past few years.

Dave:
All right, you’re hitting all of Kathy’s pillars. You’re just missing infrastructure.

Kathy:
This is my thing. This is my thing right here.

Austin:
It’s important.
So just starting there, some of these markets I have heard of just because I am in the market analytics space, but maybe viewers also haven’t heard of these markets as well. Jonesboro, Arkansas was one of them. It’s outside of Memphis. Lansing, Michigan, which is the capital of Michigan and Tulsa, Oklahoma were a few. They all had a little over four or under price to wage ratio, but I didn’t stop there. What I wanted to do then was then look at which markets had population growth, job growth, and wage growth more than the national average for all three of these metrics. So I wanted to make sure they weren’t just growing more than 0%, but they were growing more than the national average. And the top three that we landed with are Oklahoma City, Des Moines, Iowa, and Sherman, Texas. Kathy, didn’t you say Sherman, Texas before?

Kathy:
Sherman, Texas is where our single family rental fund is. We bought that’s, oh man, we bought so cheap. So cheap. It’s all doubled in value in just a year.

Dave:
Wow.

Kathy:
Yeah, we wouldn’t be able to do the fun today, but we got in at the right time. Yeah, that area, I mean asid, I’m sure you did the research there. There’s billions and billions of dollars coming into this little tiny town that is super unprepared for all of that. For chip manufacturing. I just had someone call me with a piece of land and we’re looking at developing there because they’re just not going to be able to keep up with the growth in Sherman. It’s a little concerning that so much money and so much development would come into this tiny little, hopefully they’ll be able to handle it.

Dave:
Well, lemme just ask you, Kathy, because when we say so cheap, I’d like to put that in context because right now in Sherman, the median home price is pushing 290,000, so that’s a good 140,000 lower than the national average, but we’re just so you could brag a little bit, what were you buying those single families for in Sherman a year or two ago?

Kathy:
I want to know

Dave:
Too.

Kathy:
It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt.

Dave:
Well, it’s not going to hurt you.

Kathy:
No, it doesn’t hurt me. No. So because my partner lives there and knows people, it was right when rates went up and the market just froze. So wholesalers had no one to sell to. We were buying stuff for 50 grand, 75 grand. Oh, wow.

Dave:
Man, that’s crazy. Not stabilized, right?

Kathy:
Not stabilized, yeah. Put about 50,000 in. But I think all in all finished out beautiful, beautiful finishes between 101 50.

Dave:
Awesome.

Kathy:
So yeah, those have easily doubled since then.

Dave:
Wow, good for you. That’s great.

Kathy:
Timing was right on that one.

Dave:
That’s awesome. All right, well ever give Kathy a little bit of a clap. That’s great. Okay, time for one last quick break, but stick around now that Austin has revealed the most affordable cities, and now that we’re all jealous of, Kathy, what should you do if you’re interested in investing in the cities on Austin’s, list, all of that right after the break.

Kathy:
Welcome back investors. Let’s pick up where we left off.

Dave:
Okay, well this is great information, Austin. And just to remind everyone, Austin said, Oklahoma City, Des Moines, Iowa, Sherman, Texas. There were a couple other on your list though. Austin. I’ll just read Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Waco, Texas, Johnson City, Tennessee, Spartanburg, South Carolina, Greenville, South Carolina, Indianapolis and Fargo, North Dakota. So I’m just curious. This is a great list, Austin. Thank you. What do you think investors should do with this information?

Austin:
I think that if you are interested in any of these affordable markets that are also growing more than the national average and population job and wage growth, you should do some digging. There are certain things that you can do on your own. Let’s say for example, you want to really make sure that Des Moines, Iowa is the market for you. One thing that I used to do when I wasn’t a spreadsheet coding wizard was I would just have three tabs open. The first tab, Des Moines, Iowa population. Okay, I just want to make sure the population is growing. Google will show you the graph. The next thing I did was you look up Des Moines, Iowa jobs and then the letters BLS, that stands for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they’re happy to show you the job growth in that given area. And then you might also want to look up on the third tab, Des Moines, Iowa wage growth or Des Moines, Iowa median prices or median rents.
Just do your research on these markets, see if you’re actually interested in them, see if the jobs that are there, make sense and pass the sniff test. As I like to say, there are certain things that your gut just might tell you about a market, whether it’s good or bad based on the data that you read about it. So that’s essentially where I like to start. Another thing that I want to point out that I alluded to in the beginning is yes, affordability is really hard right now for many people, but in hard times there are also opportunities. Affordability is a challenge right now in part due to the lack of supply that we have both for sale inventory and also rentals. And if we look at the top 10 largest publicly traded home builders, all 10 have outperformed the s and p 500 in the past four and a half years by double or more.
So the s and p 500 generated a return of about 69% over the past four and a half years. And then you have home builders such as Taylor Morrison making 154% Lennar 1 69, Dr. Horton 167%. If you are building inventory, whether that’s for sale or for rent, such as the build-to-rent strategy, it is likely that you are seeing good returns right now. I don’t think that trend is going to reverse for at least a while. So with respect to what investors should do right now, maybe you look in those affordable markets and maybe you look into development, whether that’s again for sale or built rent or investing passively in a syndication that does do development. I think those two areas are things that investors might want to look at right now in this particular market.

Dave:
All right. Well, that’s a great analysis here, Austin. Appreciate that. Kathy, since you are still on your victory lap, what would you do?

Kathy:
I would just buy as much as I can, but I really want to address the younger generation that is frustrated, people that are just wondering how they’re ever going to get into the game. I think Austin is a really good example of what it takes of having to be maybe a little bit uncomfortable, do something new. If you just can’t afford your market and you have the luxury of being a remote worker, then you look at one of these areas and think, is this a place I could live? You only have to put three to 5% down on a primary residence, especially if it’s your first and you might be able to afford it even if you have a low salary. My daughter was making maybe 25, $30,000 when she bought her first house in Chico, California because there were houses in the $200,000 range, and that’s how she got started.
She made 150 grand on that after a few years and was able to actually buy a house in LA when she sold it, but it was an old house. She had to fix it up. In Austin’s case, he moved. We moved from Los Angeles to Arkansas. That’s a huge change, but it got you in. It got you in. And that’s the key. A lot of people don’t understand that you don’t have to live there forever. Even if you got an FHA loan or a Fannie or Freddie or some conventional loan, there’s nothing that says you have to live there for your whole life. There’s nothing that says you have to live there for a year. You should, and your intention should be to do so, but if life should take you somewhere else, you can move and that property can turn into a rental. Your intention needs to be live there though. I’m so proud of you. I just met you today, but I’m so proud of you for doing this. Good on you.

Dave:
Thanks. I agree. Thanks guys. I think it’s awesome what you’ve done, Austin, and just living it. And just to be clear, that is a great, great way to do it. But you can also do this remotely. You can absolutely still invest in these places if you don’t want to move. There’s great ways to do it. Obviously your loans are going to be different. What kind of strategies you take are going to be different, but these are absolutely things that you can do. This is just sort of a high level maybe philosophical question, and I’ll ask you to whip out your crystal balls. There’s no right answer here, but we’re at really low affordability. Austin, you said earlier you don’t think it’s going to get any better. Why do you say that?

Austin:
Yeah, I don’t have any hard data to prove that, but just looking backwards to look forwards in 1984, the price to wage ratio was three and a half in 2014. 10 years ago, the price to wage ratio was four and a half. Five years ago it was about five. Now it’s seven. Over that 40 year timeline, affordability has gotten worse and I don’t see any reasons why it should get better.

Dave:
Okay. Well, Kathy and I spoke together at BP Con and someone asked a question sort of roughly about this, but we got into a conversation about this. I hear this narrative often on YouTube from people who have been making bold predictions that are often wrong, that affordability needs to go back to some historic average. Do you buy that?

Kathy:
I mean, it needs to Sure. Will it? That’s a different story. I mean, the cost of things is going up. If the cost of things goes back down, then sure, but what would it take for that? What would it take for, let’s take labor. Are people who build houses and put in the plumbing and they create the wood, is all of that going to get cheaper? All the things that you need to build a home? I don’t think so. Wages don’t necessarily go backwards. And it’s the same with our addiction to spending. I mean, there was a very interesting speaker at BP Con, the economist that spoke, who said that by 2030 it’s really going to, this debt is going to be a huge issue. Now how that solved, we don’t know. But what the government has done is just print more money to cover the debt. So if that’s the way we go, that makes money less valuable, which doesn’t make house more valuable. It just makes more dollars, takes more dollars to buy the house if they keep printing more, but it’s going to come to a head in 2030. So at that point, either we just default, this is off topic, but you either grow your way out of this or you print more money and either way, that’s going to affect the cost of housing increasing the cost of it.

Dave:
Well, I do want to say there was this talk about it happening in 2030. I do think that’s a very imprecise, I’m just going to give my own opinion. I think that’s a very imprecise forecast. We’ve had that speaker on before, and she had previously said 2026. So just to remind people that these things are not specific, but obviously the debt is a big issue that will come to a head probably at some point. Back to this idea of affordability, I think for the housing market to be healthy, some level of affordability needs to get restored. And I think a lot of people have said, okay, that’s why housing prices are going to crash. But the more common, at least I think more popular opinion among housing market analysts and economists is that we will get marginally better affordability over the next few years due to some combination of slowing appreciation.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be negative, but it’s not going to be at 15% likely like it was during the pandemic, real wage growth. So people are going to make more money to Austin’s analysis and mortgage rates, hopefully slowly going down. That should improve things. But I see this things on YouTube where it’s like the long-term average of affordability is act, so therefore the housing market has to crash. I don’t think that’s true necessarily. I don’t think that’s good for society, but I think there is a good chance based on just the analysis, Austin’s done the data, we see that housing stays less affordable than it was historically. And as we’ve talked about in this episode, there’s precedent for that in a lot of other countries and Austin named many of them. And so I hope that’s not the case, but I don’t think that if you’re an investor sitting on the sidelines saying, I’m going to wait until affordability approves, I hope, and I actually do expect it’ll get a little better over the next few years, but back to 2010, back to the nineties, I don’t see it.

Kathy:
Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

Dave:
Yeah.

Kathy:
But one other thing is that looking at demographics, it was always known that 2020 to 2024 was going to be a difficult time because of this very large group of millennials. That’s right. Unfortunately, the builders didn’t pay attention to that. This wave was coming, but now we’re at the end of 2024 where that wave of first time home buyers is getting a little bit older and the group behind them is smaller. So there’s also that maybe that will help, except that we had so much immigration, so that could have made up for

Dave:
It. That’s true. Alright, well, Kathy, thanks so much for joining us. And Austin, thank you for doing this research. We really appreciate your analytical approach here. And again, congratulations on landing that first deal.

Austin:
Thanks guys. Always happy to help.

Dave:
Thank you all for listening to this episode of On The Market. We’ll be back in a few days with another episode on The Market was created by me, Dave Meyer and Kaylin Bennett. The show is produced by Kaylin Bennett, with editing by Exodus Media. Copywriting is by Calico content, and we want to extend a big thank you to everyone at BiggerPockets for making this show possible.