These Are the Top 10 Most Affordable Small Towns in the U.S. – Thrillist

Ever wonder what your life would be like if you lived somewhere else? Everywhere has its pros and cons, of course. Big, bustling cities with never-ending options will always attract people, while small towns can be deceptively expensive, for example. Still, there are some serious perks to choosing small-town living, and a new study published by Realtor.com found 10 different cities, all of them on the smaller side, where you can save some green and have fun.

One factor families are considering is the amount of space available. Pandemic-era homeowners are looking for more room to work from home and enjoy the outdoors. Danielle Hale, a chief economist for realtor.com, says, “We’ve seen home shoppers prefer larger homes with more outdoor space as a result of the pandemic, and home-shopping interest has [especially] increased in areas that offer outdoor activities such as beaches or skiing.”

To put the list together, Realtor.com looked at US cities with a population under 50,000, then added in affordability factors like median home list prices, year-over-year list price change, and ownership costs as a percentage of income. The study also factored in things like unemployment rates and rates of violent crime and property crime. Below we’ve listed the 10 cities from the study:

1. New Ulm, Minnesota
Median Listing Price: $139,900

2. Lexington, Nebraska
Median Listing Price: $145,000

3. Houghton, Michigan
Median Listing Price: $149,500

4. Spencer, Iowa
Median Listing Price: $92,500

5. Wahpeton, North Dakota
Median Listing Price: $179,900

6. Wapakoneta, Ohio
Median Listing Price: $145,000

7. Los Alamos, New Mexico
Median Listing Price: $307,500

8. Lincoln, Illinois
Median Listing Price: $84,900

9. Maryville, Missouri
Median Listing Price: $150,000

10. Seneca Falls, New York
Median Listing Price: $114,900

When putting together the list, the website also took care to limit the list to one small town per state to ensure some geographic diversity. However, from looking at the list, the Midwest is the most represented. According to Hale, the Midwest has a special combination that other places don’t have. “The Midwest is well-represented thanks to its affordable home prices and abundance of small towns—and the few areas outside of the Midwest are both scenic and historic.”