10 best big cities for homeownership

These days, we’ve got lots of lists of the best cities for this kind and that kind of life, including the best cities for every life stage.

The website NerdWallet has put together another list: the 10 best big cities for homeownership, measuring home prices versus incomes and evaluating whether a city was poised to grow. To do the evaluation, NerdWallet evaluated the 25 biggest U.S. cities.

The Sun Belt did well, though a few cities in colder climes made the cut.

Post continues below

Coming in at the top of the list was Fort Worth, Texas, where the median price of a three-bedroom home was $200,396, the lowest of the cities analyzed. The median individual (not household) income was $24,290, and the cost of living was below the national average.

• Housing market improving in all 50 states

Although it has a higher cost of living than the national average, Denver made the list, because its residents also have a higher median income. The city on the list where the cost of living was lowest was San Antonio.

• 57% of metro areas saw more foreclosures in 2012

Here is the entire list, with the median price for a three-bedroom home:

• Fort Worth: $200,396.
• Charlotte, N.C.: $231,090.
• San Antonio: $224,190.
• El Paso, Texas: $231,054.
• Jacksonville, Fla.: $217,710.
• Austin, Texas: $234,193.
• Phoenix: $274,800.
• Indianapolis: $227,102.
• Denver: $340,529.
• Columbus, Ohio: $216,923.

Don’t turn up your nose at these affordable cities. Five also made Travel + Leisure’s list of the 35 Best Cities for Hipsters. Austin ranked seventh, Denver was 10th, San Antonio was 30th, Phoenix was 31st and Dallas-Fort Worth ranked 35th. (Not all the hipster cities were included in the NerdWallet analysis.)

• Spring selling season finds little to sell

Three of the cities were also included in Bloomberg’s 20 best places to live, which was based on culture, education, economy, crime and air quality. Denver, Austin and Columbus were included on that list, which also looked at cities that NerdWallet didn’t rank.

What do you think of these lists? What factors would you include if you were to rank the best cities?