This Florida City Was Ranked One Of The Worst For First-Time Home Buyers
If you're a new homeowner, you might want to avoid South Florida. Miami Beach was just named one of the worst cities in America for first-time homeowners. The ranking was announced Tuesday by a national firm that looks at housing affordability.
WalletHub ranked the ritzy city at number 292 of its "Best and Worst Cities for First-Time Home Buyers" list. The city placed near the statistical bottom in the three main metrics the website measured: affordability, real estate market, and quality of life.
It was the only Florida city to land in the bottom 10, with California dominating the lower half of the list. The college town of Berkeley, California, ranked dead last as America's least affordable city for new homebuyers.
While Miami Beach took the last spot when it came to property crime rates like break-ins and robberies, it wasn't Florida's only low-ranking area.
A few notches ahead was its cross-bay cousin, Miami, which also fared poorly in all of the site's metrics.
It wasn't all bad news for homebuyers looking to plant roots in the Sunshine State. Miami Gardens came in second for the Highest Median Home-Price Appreciation, and your home will be nearly property crime-free in Port St. Lucie, with the city having the second-lowest rate.
WalletHub looked at 300 American cities and used a combination of 26 "key indicators" to compile the ranking and used the number of each to come up with an average score.
According to the site, the best Florida city to purchase your first home is in Tampa, with an overall ranking of 6 in the country. It came in at number one for its real estate market and ranked 28th for quality of life.
Other Florida cities to grace the Top 100 was Cape Coral (18), Orlando (27), St. Petersburg (39), Palm Bay (44), Boca Raton (54), Jacksonville (56), Lakeland (59), Sunrise (64), Clearwater (71), and Port St. Lucie (73).
If you're wondering which city hit the number one spot, it was Henderson, Nevada, a suburb near Las Vegas.