If you’re in the market for a new home and happen to be a first time home buyer, there’s some good news for you. The personal finance website WalletHub recently ranked Grand Rapids as “2018’s 5th Best City for First-Time Home Buyers”.
“We’re always interested in giving people as much information as possible that can help them save as much money as possible. And buying a house is one of the most important financial decisions you’ll ever make and there should be some careful planning that goes into it. And there’s a lot of factors in play.”
John Kiernan is the Senior Editor with WalletHub. WalletHub just took the “pulse” of real estate as they call it. Kiernan says they compared 300 cities of varying sizes across 27 key indicators relating to market attractiveness, affordability and quality of life. Their data set ranges from cost of living to real-estate taxes to property-crime rate. Their results put Grand Rapids at the 5th best city for first time home buyers and second best among mid-size cities.
“What we try to do is take pre conceived notions out of thing and let the data tell us the story and what we’re seeing is that Grand Rapids is well positioned as a housing market and able to attract first time homebuyers.”
Kiernan says WalletHub’s report shows there are a number of things in Grand Rapids’ favor.
“It’s ranked 17th overall for affordability and 18th for real estate market rank. So it’s not too expensive to live there and has a growing, improving real estate market and those are good things for first time home buyers to look into. Who aren’t too flush with cash and maybe not looking for their forever home, maybe it’s kind of a starter home.”
Kiernan says as it relates to other Michigan cities… Grand Rapids was at the top. It’s followed by Livonia, Dearborn, Warren, Sterling Heights, Ann Arbor, Lansing with Flint and Detroit at the bottom. For more details you can go wallethub.com and search for best and worst cities for first time home buyers.
