15 Best (Cheapest) Places in the U.S. to Buy a Starter Home

Affordability is a big nationwide issue in the housing market, especially in the larger and hotter markets where demand has been pushing prices to record highs for years.

The price growth rate has slowed, but that doesn't mean prices have fallen substantially. Combined with soaring interest rates, first-time home buyers -- who typically don't have huge incomes or down payments -- might want to look at the towns on this list to secure their piece of the American Dream of homeownership.

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Pottsville is a community of about 15,000 people on the Schuylkill River, about 100 miles from Philadelphia and only a bit farther from New York City. This coalfield town once had an NFL team (in the 1920s), and it's still the home of Yuengling beer. While the median house price here jumped more than 25% in the past year, that median price is still only about $90,000.

ALSO READ: First-Time Homebuyers Guide

Clovis is in the San Joaquin Valley, about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. With a population of about 112,000, it's a suburb of Fresno that generally gets good marks for livability and schools. The median home price here is right around $500,000. That's a lot, but remember that the median home price in the Golden State is now more than $800,000.

Akron is in northeast Ohio, just south of Cleveland and just north of Canton. Once home to the rubber industry, it now has a more diverse economy, a surprising amount of green space, and several parks surrounding the city, as well as higher education options like the 25,000-student University of Akron in town and 21,000-student Kent State University just to the east. The median home price here is only about $122,000.

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Dallas is one of the nation's hotter jobs and housing markets. Garland is one of the larger cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, with a fast-growing population of about 245,000 and easy public transportation and highway access to downtown Big D. The average home price in Garland is about $330,000, compared with about $530,000 for the Dallas market overall.

You can get your kicks on Route 66 on the way to Joplin and then settle there for a first-time-buyer-friendly median home price of about $175,000. Along with a modest mortgage, you get to live at the edge of the Ozarks in a town of only about 55,000 people that is rich with history and character -- and some nice waterfalls -- at the intersection of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma, with Arkansas just down the road.

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Exeter is another good example of relative affordability. The median home price here is about $540,000, but that's well below the average of around $750,000 about an hour south on I-95 in the Boston market. This picturesque river town of some 16,000 residents is about 10 miles off the coast and has a lot of appeal for first-time home buyers seeking the classic New England lifestyle and feel.

ALSO READ: How to Save for a House: 5 Steps to Preparing for Homeownership

Hobbs is a semi-desert town of 34,000 people nestled near the Texas line, some 50 miles north of El Paso. There's a casino and the headquarters of the Soaring Society of America here, an interesting combination, and a median listing home price of about $245,000.

Gaffney is on Interstate 85 between Atlanta and Charlotte, close to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina and the thriving industrial area anchored by BMW in nearby Greenville-Spartanburg. A mild climate, semi-rural setting, and even a highly visible water tank in the shape of a peach (the Peachoid) are attractions for this community of about 12,500 people. The average listing price here lately is about $155,000.

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Des Moines is not only a state capital but also a pretty cheap place to buy a house. A median price of about $190,000 is all it takes to get you some digs of your own in this city of about 215,000 (a metro area of about 700,000) that consistently ranks high on lists of most livable cities.

Hey, a city that bills itself as the "Athens of the Ozarks" has to have something going on, right? For Fayetteville, it's the cultural and academic anchor of the 29,000-student University of Arkansas. The city itself has about 94,000 residents and a metro area of about 550,000. The median sales price for a home is about $300,000.

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Lansing is another state capital that offers both affordability and a lot going on. Besides state government, there's 50,000-student Michigan State University (OK, it's in East Lansing, but it's right there), Detroit not too far to the south, and the vast Michigan lakes and woodlands. Lansing itself has a population of only about 112,000, but the metro area is home to around 540,000. Lansing's median home price, meanwhile, is a modest $125,000.

ALSO READ: Is 2022 a Good Time to Buy a House?

Huntington is home to 12,000-student Marshall University and about 49,000 residents, with a metro area of about 350,000 that reaches into Ohio and Kentucky as well. The city's also a bustling industrial market anchored by the Port of Huntington Tri-State, one of the busiest inland ports in the country. The median home price in this Ohio River community is about $140,000.

Peoria is a quintessential Midwest town -- Groucho Marx gets the credit for coining "Will it play in Peoria?" -- perched along the Illinois River in the middle of the state. With a metro population of about 373,000, Peoria's an agriculture shipping center.

And the Rivian Automotive manufacturing plant not far away in Bloomington, Illinois, should help bolster the manufacturing base here once dominated by Caterpillar. Meanwhile, new homebuyers can enjoy numerous cultural and recreational offerings and a median home price of about $130,000.

ALSO READ: Investing in Agriculture Stocks

With a population of about 950,000 -- about twice that of Miami proper -- Jacksonville is Florida's biggest city, and it's relatively affordable, with a median listing price of about $300,000. Compare that with $400,000 for Tampa and $518,000 for the aforementioned Miami. You still get the Atlantic Ocean and Sunshine State weather, just less mortgage.

Milwaukee is more than home to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, brats, and beer. It has major sports action, a beautiful Lake Michigan lakefront, nice suburbs, and a population of about 580,000 with a metro area that's home to about 1.6 million people. The current median home price here is only about $175,000, to boot -- about half that of Chicago, just 90 miles to the south.

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You've noticed we used median home prices here. Each of these markets has homes much, much cheaper and some more expensive, of course.

Plus, a cheap house in a pricey West Coast market will simply be more expensive than one in a medium-sized Midwest market. That's just the nature of this beast.

But this list should give first-time homebuyers some food for thought as they digest their possibilities for where to make their income stretch the farthest in today's volatile housing market.

Marc Rapport has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.