Buying a home for the first time is a big milestone in everyone’s life, a feeling of independence and growth. However, choosing the city to buy that first home in is a big part of ownership.
WalletHub’s 2017’s Best & Worst Places for First-Time Home Buyers has Miami, FL ranked as the fifth worst city to buy the first home in.
The study compared 300 cities of varying sizes across 23 key indicators of market attractiveness, affordability, and quality of life. Cost of living to real-estate taxes to property-crime also came into play for these results.
Miami is the city with the highest property-crime rate, which fell into the quality of life factor.
According to Neighborhood Scout, Miami has a property-crime rate of 43.77 per 1,000 residents. The National median is 26. A resident’s chances of being a victim of property-crime are 1 in 23 in Miami, while in Florida it’s a 1 in 36 chance.
There was one Florida city that ranked at the top for the best place for first-time home buyers though. Tampa came in as the 31st best city. The city ranked 28th and 26th in the “real-estate market” rank and “quality of life” rank.
The best city for first-time home buyers is McKinney, TX and the worst is Santa Barbara, CA. The lowest cost of living is in Laredo, TX and the highest-cost of living was a tie between New York, San Jose, San Francisco, Honolulu, and Fremont.
Visit WalletHub for the complete results and a breakdown of rankings.
