20 Growing US Counties Where Homeownership Is Still Affordable

The rising cost of real estate has challenged many homebuyers in recent years. A 2021 survey found that about half of Americans (49%) considered the affordability of housing in their communities a major problem. In many places, homeownership is now unaffordable for locals and newcomers alike.

Fortunately, this isn’t true everywhere. MoneyGeek analyzed price appreciation since 2019 and homeownership costs as a percentage of median income to find 20 growing U.S. counties where housing is still affordable.

• Clayton County, Georgia, and Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, top our list for growing communities with affordable housing. Located in the Greater Atlanta metro area, Clayton County home prices have appreciated 83.1% in the past three years; during the same period, Cumberland County homes in the Greater Harrisburg metro area appreciated 53.4%.
• More than half — 13 out of 20 — of the affordable and desirable places on our list are in the Southeastern U.S. Those counties pop up more in South Carolina than in any other state.
• Home prices as a percentage of income were lowest in Lexington County, South Carolina — in the Columbia metro area — at 34% of income. Hidalgo County, Texas, and Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, tied for the next two lowest at 38%.
• Most of the cities on this list are ‌in tertiary real estate markets. Some of these smaller metro areas — like Hidalgo, Lubbock and Webb County in Texas — have median home prices that fall under $200,000. That’s 53% less than the median price of houses sold in the U.S. in Q1 2022.
• None of the median home prices on our list exceeded $272,000, which is 37% less than the national median home price of $428,700.

In recent years, finding affordable real estate has become nearly impossible in many U.S. communities. The reasons for this shift in the housing market are complex. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated labor shortages and supply chain delays, which led to slower residential home construction. As a result, home prices skyrocketed, leading to higher mortgage payments and home insurance costs on newly purchased properties. Other factors contributing to high home prices and housing demands include increasing rates of remote work — driving people to move to larger homes — and historically low mortgage rates.

However, there is some good news amidst these challenges: home prices aren’t rising at the same rate everywhere. In many cases, housing affordability is influenced by an area’s cost of living. Tertiary markets hold a great deal of promise in that they may be growing in population and opportunity while still having relatively low costs of living. Tertiary markets usually have a population of less than 1 million and aren't as well known as secondary and primary markets. These places can be hidden gems in a trying housing market like what homebuyers are facing in 2022.

MoneyGeek analyzed historical home prices, fair market rents and median mortgage payments from the National Association of Realtors, local property tax rates from SmartAsset and population growth and median earnings from the U.S. Census by county to find counties in the U.S. that are growing but still have affordable housing.

Counties identified as recently unaffordable in the list above met the following criteria:

• Populations larger than 250,000
• Population growth greater than the average population growth in the country
• A 2019 ratio of income-to-mortgage expenses that was less than 60%
• House price appreciation since 2019 that was greater than 25%
• Monthly homeownership costs less than 50% of the median income in the county

To order the list of places, we combined the following factors into a score:

• Price appreciation since 2019: double weight
• Homeownership costs as % of median income

The data points presented are defined as follows:

• Nearby Metro Area: The metropolitan statistical area where each county is located.
• Median Income: The median income in the county.
• Median Home Price: The median home price in the county.
• Monthly Homeownership Cost: The median monthly homeownership cost in the county.
• Home Costs as % of Income: Housing costs in the county divided by the median income in the county, multiplied by 100.
• Home Price Appreciation in the Last 3 Years: House price appreciation in the county from 2019 to 2021.
• Own/Rent Ratio: The number of people who own homes divided by the number of people who rent in the county.