6 Cheap Places You Can Buy a Home Right Now

As another record year for real estate comes to a close, many people are still hunting for their dream home.

And with the rise in remote work, many people are searching for a new place outside their existing zip code. Since median home prices have continued to rise over the past two years (and even hit an astonishing high of $350,300 in May) we put together a list of cities around the country where the average cost of a home remains under $300,000. Here are six cheap(ish) places to buy a home right now.

Little Rock, Arkansas

Median home value: $171,459

According to Zillow, Little Rock homeowners only need to spend an average of 11.4 percent of their income on their mortgage payment, which makes it an affordable market to move into. Homes in the city have seen a 5.3 percent increase since last year, and they are predicted to rise another 9.6 percent, making Little Rock a smart investment when it comes to real estate. 

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Median home value: $204,024

While the median price of homes in Baton Rouge went up by 6 percent in 2021, it’s still lower than the national average, coming in just under $200,000. Homeowners in Baton Rouge will also get to keep more of their paycheck, since Zillow says most people only need to spend about 12.4 percent of their earnings on their mortgage payment. All of those things have turned Baton Rouge into an appealing market, with 14.4 percent more homes being sold in 2020 than in 2019.

Louisville, Kentucky

Median home value: $211,827

Here homeowners only need to spend 12.9 percent of their income on their mortgage payment, making Louisville an inexpensive place to call home. And with public schools ranking slightly higher than the national average, people looking to call the Kentucky hub home need to move fast. Home sales are reportedly up 13 percent from last year, with many properties receiving multiple offers.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Median home value: $171,910

Considering it only costs $1.96 to buy a gallon of milk, homeowners will enjoy a lower cost of living when they opt to buy in Oklahoma City. In fact, the city’s cost of living is estimated to be 14.6 percent below the national average. Like most places, it’s still a seller’s market in Oklahoma City, with the median time a property sits on the market hovering around 42 days.

St. Louis, Missouri

Median home value: $161,038

With a population of around 300,000, homeowners in St. Louis will get some big city perks with a suburban price tag. The average home price comes in under $200,000, far below the current national average of $303,000. The cost of living also remains low here at 12.6 percent below the US average. Because homes sell fast, often in under a week, they tend to go for more than asking (7 percent more in most cases). Which means if you want to buy in St. Louis, you need to be fast. 

Tampa, Florida

Median home value: $259,155

The Sunshine State has a lot to offer prospective homeowners, with a cost of living 9.1 percent below the national average. While those who work and live in the city of Tampa may have lower salaries than average (they actually tend to trend about 15 percent lower than the national average) Tampa homeowners don’t have to pay income tax — meaning residents get to keep more of their paycheck. Of course, that could be why nobody is moving out of the city. Tampa’s inventory of homes for sale is down by almost 68 percent over the last year. 

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If there is a home that you would like more information about, if you are considering selling a property, or if you have questions about the housing market in your neighborhood, please reach out. We’re here to help.

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Study: 24% of sellers received four or more offers in 2021

Buyers needing financing or insisting on inspection still competitive

Nearly one quarter of U.S. home sellers received four or more offers on their home in 2021, according to Zillow’s latest consumer housing trends report.

The rise in the number of homes that received multiple offers is reflected in the increased frequency of bidding wars in 2021. Typical sellers received two offers, which is the same as the past three years.

The report, which was based off of data collected by Zillow Group Population Science through a national survey of more than 2,000 sellers, also found that the percentage of offers that fell through was slightly higher than in years past, with 56% of sellers reporting that none of the offers on their property fell through compared to 58% in 2020. The median number of offers that fell through, however, remained at zero for the fourth year in a row.

Most sellers (74%) received at least one offer on their property that was all cash or did not include a financing contingency. This is slightly higher than the number of buyers who reported purchasing a home without a mortgage (68%). This discrepancy suggests that buyers who need financing can still compete with cash offers, as long as their offer is appealing in other ways.

One such way a buyer could make their offer more appealing is by waiving an inspection. In 2021, 65% of sellers reported that they received at least one offer that waived an inspection, but 88% of successful buyers said they got an inspection prior to finalizing their home purchase. Only 16% of homes sold in 2021 underwent no inspections from potential buyers, according to the report, a clear sign that buyers who insist on an inspection are still competitive.

Overall, sellers were typically white (72%) and selling in suburban areas (51%) in the South (41%). Only 10% of sellers were Black, while Latinx and AAPI sellers made up 8% and 6% of all seller, respectively.

Nearly 80% of sellers said that a life event influenced their decision to sell their home, with 46% citing a change in their household or family size as their main reason for moving. About two-thirds of sellers (65%) also reported buying a home.

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If there is a home that you would like more information about, if you are considering selling a property, or if you have questions about the housing market in your neighborhood, please reach out. We’re here to help.

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How 3 Homebuyers Bought Without Financial Help From Parents

Ever look at your peers and wonder, “How the heck are these people buying a home? Where did they get enough money for a down payment?”

The truth is, a lot of them probably had help. Just over half (52 percent) of first-time homebuyers in 2020 received financial assistance from a family member, according to a survey by Realtor.com.  

But it is possible to amass a down payment and make homeownership happen on your own, without a parental loan. (Or a trust fund, for that matter, which some real people actually have, even though they’re not the villains of an ‘80s movie.) 

For a bit of inspiration — and a dose of practical advice — here are three true stories of people who bought their first homes without any financial help from family or friends.  

The Pandemic Saver Who Used a First-Time Buyer Program

An accountant in her mid-20s, Morgan was renting in New York when Covid first hit, but moved back in with her parents in June 2020. A year later, she closed on a one-bedroom unit in a co-op building north of New York City. 

She hadn’t really been planning to buy a home. But when Morgan got a new job outside the city, she realized she didn’t want to keep living with her parents forever, nor did she want to pay rent in the city again. And after months of living rent-free — with virtually no dining-out expenses due to the pandemic — she suddenly realized she had a good-sized down payment saved up. “I was just living at home, saving all this money, because there was nowhere to go,” she says.  

Morgan looked up first-time homebuyer programs online, and discovered that she qualified for New York State’s “Achieving the Dream” program, which offers low-down payment mortgages to first-time buyers with a stable job, good credit, and an income under $95,000. What’s more, the program offered her down payment assistance — 3 percent of the home’s purchase price, or about $8,200 — in the form of an interest-free, forgivable loan. “I could use it to cover all of my closing costs, and the rest went towards my down payment,” she says. 

The financial help came with some conditions, of course. Morgan said the mandatory first-time homebuyer education course was simple enough, but the down payment assistance was more confusing. “I’m signing all my paperwork, and I get this thing about a ‘recapture tax’,” she says. “I’m a tax accountant, and like, even I’d never heard of a recapture tax.” 

Essentially, the grant is an interest-free loan that gets forgiven over the course of 10 years, as long as the buyer stays in the home. But if Morgan were to sell for a gain after, say, five years, she would have to pay back the second half of the grant, and would also owe some taxes on the first five years of free money. 

Morgan didn’t realize the grant would appear as a second mortgage, even though she doesn’t have to make payments on it — and the co-op she bought into doesn’t typically allow second mortgages. “So I had to write a letter to the board explaining the whole program,” she says. 

As for savings strategies, she says, “It sounds so lame, but track your spending. I didn’t realize how much money I spent eating out.” And, she adds, “do the math on renting versus buying” in your area, because saving for a home is just the beginning; there’s also maintenance and other costs afterward. “It’s not just the down payment — it’s all the costs after you buy.” 

The Debt Slayer Who Got Serious About Saving

Out in Los Angeles, Brittany also explored first-time homebuyer programs, but ultimately used a regular mortgage to buy her one-bedroom condo. “They had a lot of red tape and bureaucracy,” Brittany says, and she worried that any hold-ups would end up putting her at a disadvantage in LA’s ultra-competitive housing market. 

Brittany started getting herself into financial shape years ago, when she first got serious about paying off her student loan debt. “I didn’t want to bring debt into my late 30s,” she says. So with the help of “God, grit, and Google,” she got serious about saving. 

She drove her last car into the ground, going eight years without a car payment and putting that roughly $300 a month toward her debt instead. She didn’t buy her first smartphone until 2016. And she moved to a cheaper part of town and got a roommate. “I went from paying like $1,300 or whatever to paying like $600 or $700,” she says. “And that taught me about living with other people, taught me about communication.” 

As her debt shrank, the tangible progress she made felt exciting and kept her motivated, and in 2017, Brittany paid off the last of her student loans. But she kept up her good financial habits, with the extra money she saved now going toward a house fund instead of student loans. 

By 2020, she had a modest down payment and, thanks to years of aggressive debt repayment, a stellar credit score. “I had all these residual benefits of trying to get that student loan debt out of my life,” she says. “So that made me a pretty attractive buyer to banks, and I was able to get pre-approved pretty quickly.” 

Brittany was only casually looking for a home at first. But after her landlord raised the rent by nearly $1,000, she got serious, fast — and honed her search down to the most crucial elements. 

“I got super aggressive looking and putting in offers and just kind of seeing the potential in a home instead of the home needing to meet all these other criteria,” she says. 

Her advice on saving? Keep trying different strategies until you find the ones that mesh with your lifestyle. Some worked for her, and some, like the “envelope budget,” just didn’t. So instead of trying to force it, Brittany says, she would keep experimenting “until I finally got something that works for me, and I was able to incorporate it into my lifestyle so it’s not hard for me to do, because it just felt like it wasn’t an extra effort.”  

The Career Switcher Who Prioritized Homeownership

Since she was five years old, S. Rae had always wanted to be an archaeologist. After years of graduate school, she made that dream come true. But by her late 20s, another dream had started to take root. “My husband and I had the conversation of: What do we want, what’s important?” Rae says. “And one of the big things we decided that we absolutely wanted was to own a house, a place that was ours.” 

At the time, Rae was spending up to three months a year at far-off archaeological sites across or outside the country, earning a meager $9 an hour despite her graduate degree. While her husband’s tech job in Washington, D.C., helped the couple stay afloat and pay their bills, there wasn’t anything left over to save for a down payment.

So Rae went back to school for computer science and got a high-paying job within a month of graduating. “I made a kind of pragmatic choice to switch careers entirely,” she says. “I guess you could say I kind of picked a career that instead of filling my soul, filled my wallet.”  

The couple immediately started saving toward a down payment, and four years later, in late 2020, they were able to put 20 percent down on their first home without any help. Rae says she and her husband are both mindful of their spending — with expected expenses plotted out on an Excel spreadsheet — and it helped that they’re on the same page financially. 

“We have a rule that any frivolous purchases, at the time anything over $50, you had to talk about,” Rae says. “We were very careful with what we’d spend our money on.” 

Another strategy Rae employs — a trick she learned from her uncle — is pricing out purchases in terms of her real hourly wage. “Think about what you’re getting paid per hour, and when you want something you didn’t plan for, do the math: How much of your time does it take to pay for that thing?” she suggests. Whether it’s a new dress or tech gadget, once you run the numbers (and realize you’d have to spend six extra hours at work to pay for it) you might realize it’s not worth your time. “I mean, time is finite, that’s the only resource you can’t acquire more of,” she says.

With a down payment saved, Rae and her husband began house hunting outside of D.C. in February 2020. Of course, the pandemic threw a monkey wrench into the process — a wrench that soon seemed to ratchet up the competition. 

“We were expecting bidding wars, but… the offers we were putting in, we were losing out to people offering 30 percent over asking, cash upfront, no contingencies,” Rae says. “We learned very early — about the third ‘no’ — that we shouldn’t get too emotionally invested, because there’s a good chance it’s going to go to somebody else.” 

It took nearly a year and about a dozen offers before they finally landed a winning bid — lucking out with a seller willing to take the first full-priced offer. She loves the home’s spacious yard and vegetable garden, which provides fresh food for the couple’s pet rabbits, and the privacy it affords after living upstairs from an amateur DJ who had a habit of practicing late at night.  

“I had to make the very hard choice of giving up my career, years and years of schooling, the money for that schooling, and really a lifetime of dreams and wishes — and remind myself that I had it for a moment, I know what it looks like,” she says. “But I also know that coming home from work happy with what you do every day doesn’t mean a lot if you hate where you put your head down at night.”  

Rae says they could have looked for a less expensive home far outside of DC, maybe even on an archaeologist’s salary. “But then you’ve got a three- to four-hour commute every day, and I’ve done the three-hour commute before — it’s not sustainable,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how much you love audiobooks… you get home and there’s just nothing left of you.” 

Rae recommends homebuyers ignore outside expectations, particularly those held by previous generations. “It isn’t a competition, you can’t do it on anybody else’s timeline but your own,” she says. “You have to decide, either on your own with your partner, with your family, whatever your circumstances are, how important having a house is, what kind of joy it brings you.” 

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If there is a home that you would like more information about, if you are considering selling a property, or if you have questions about the housing market in your neighborhood, please reach out. We’re here to help.

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3 ski areas in Colorado are vying to be first to open

In 15 of the past 20 years, at least one of those areas — Arapahoe Basin, Loveland and Keystone — has opened during the second or third week of October

Three Front Range ski areas vying for the annual distinction of being the first to open for the season could begin snowmaking operations very soon. They just need Mother Nature to cooperate.

In 15 of the past 20 years, at least one of those areas — Arapahoe Basin, Loveland and Keystone — has opened during the second or third week of October, usually relying heavily on manmade snow, The Denver Post reported. But October this year is likely to have above-average temperatures with average or slightly below-average precipitation, said Kari Bowen, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the resorts won’t be able to make snow, but a cold October doesn’t appear to be in the forecast.

Beyond that, the weather service’s Climate Prediction Center says there is a 60% chance of above-normal temperatures for the northern and central mountains over the next three months with a 60% chance of below-normal precipitation.

From the early 1980s through 2001, the rivalry to become the first Front Range ski area to open was between Keystone and Loveland. Then, in 2002, Arapahoe Basin installed snowmaking equipment, and the opening day race became a duel between A-Basin and Loveland.

The race shifted again in 2019 when Keystone got back into the game, adding 53 automated snow guns with 11,000 feet of pipe and 15 miles of electrical cable.

- Colorado Sun

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Thank you to our partners at the Denver Metro Association of Realtors for compiling this information.

If there is a home that you would like more information about, if you are considering selling a property, or if you have questions about the housing market in your neighborhood, please reach out. We’re here to help.

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5 Wildflowers To Plant in Fall for a Spectacular Spring Garden

Before you put your gardening tools away for the season, prep your garden for spring by getting some wildflower seeds in the ground. Planting in the fall not only saves time come spring, but it also means you'll get some early blooms of wildflowers, explains Rebecca Sears, chief gardener at Ferry-Morse.

"Fall is actually a great time to plant wildflower seeds as it follows the organic cycle of naturally grown wildflowers," says Sears. "Wildflowers grow throughout the summer and then drop their seeds in the fall, which will be ready to produce new flowers the following spring. When planting wildflower seeds in the fall, they have the opportunity to lie dormant throughout the winter and often sprout up quickly the first few weeks of spring. Many gardeners enjoy planting in the fall too, as the gardening to-do list is often shorter then rather than spring, so there’s more time to focus on preparing the area and planting fall seeds."

Sears says you can plant wildflower seeds late into the fall season, just be sure to consult the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map to check your plant zone for more precise timing.

"Generally, if your region gets freezing temperatures in the winter, you can plant wildflower seeds until December, ensuring that there have been enough nights of frost so the soil temperature is cool enough to support the seeds lying dormant," says Sears. "And if your region does not get freezing temperatures in the winter, it’s still best to wait until just before the rainy season, typically between early-mid fall."

Wildflower Seeds, Perennial Mix Economy Packet — $4.00

“A Perennial Mix of wildflowers includes a mix of both annuals and perennials, providing a beautiful array of colors throughout varying sizes of plants,” says Sears. “The plants will bloom in various stages during the growing season, and the perennials will return to bloom year after year. Some of my favorites in this mix are Shasta Daisies and Purple Coneflower.”

Wildflower Seeds, Shade Mix Economy Packet — $4.00

“If your yard gets lots of shade, you can try a Wildflower Shade Mix that includes wildflower varieties specifically selected for partially shady areas,” says Sears. “There’s no compromise on what these seeds will produce though, they’ll provide a spectrum of color and natural-looking beauty throughout the growing season. I love the colors of the forget-me-nots, baby’s breath, and poppies in this one.”

Butterfly Weed Seeds — $3.00

“Butterfly Weed, also known as Milkweed, is an upright and vigorous perennial with beautiful bright orange colors,” says Sears. “As its name suggests, this wildflower is a pollinator, so plant around wood side edges to attract beautiful butterflies. Butterfly Weed is a staple in my garden, and it looks great in cut flower bouquets.”

“California Poppies are hard to resist with their delicate and silky, golden-orange colored blooms,” says Sears. “These grow shorter than other wildflower varieties, but look great around flower bed borders or front and center ahead of taller blooms. California poppies are also good pollinators and will attract butterflies throughout the season. Plant these in the fall and enjoy gorgeous shades of purple, blue, pink, yellow, white, and other bi-colors on these flowers.”

Lupine Seeds, Russell's Hybrid Mixed Colors — $3.00

“For spectacular sweet-pea-like blossoms in a rainbow of colors, try unique and beautiful Lupine,” says Sears. “The blooms are packed closely together on long, graceful spikes and are an impressive sight in the garden. I like to group these seeds together to showcase their range of colors.”

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If there is a home that you would like more information about, if you are considering selling a property, or if you have questions about the housing market in your neighborhood, please reach out. We’re here to help.

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