Surprise, Gilbert, Yuma, Peoria and Chandler all cracked the top 10 on WalletHub’s annual ranking of the Best & Worst Cities for First-Time Homebuyers.
Surprise ranked No. 2 in the country on WalletHub’s annual ranking of the Best & Worst Cities for First-Time Homebuyers.
The finance site compared 300 cities based on three overarching metrics: affordability, the real estate market and quality of life.
Surprise ranked No. 2 in the country, behind only Palm Bay, Florida; Gilbert ranked No. 3, Yuma ranked No. 5, Peoria ranked No. 6 and Chandler ranked No. 8.
Scottsdale and Mesa also ranked Nos. 14 and 16, respectively, making Phoenix the area with the highest number of optimal markets for first-timers. In comparison, the only other metros with multiple cities in the top 25 were Tampa, where Tampa proper, Cape Coral and Lakeland ranked Nos. 4, 11 and 21, respectively; Virginia Beach, where Chesapeake and Virginia Beach proper ranked Nos. 15 and 24, respectively; and Miami, where Boca Raton and Sunrise ranked Nos. 19 and 22, respectively.
“Buying a home for the first time is a very stressful and difficult process, especially when housing prices are through the roof and interest rates have risen sharply in the past few years,” said WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo. “The best cities for first-time homebuyers not only are affordable both in terms of buying a house and living there afterward, but they also have a lot of housing choices as well as low crime rates and good schools.”
Zooming in on Surprise, the city has a large number of new building permits per capita and the 11th-most home listings per capita, plus the 18th-highest home-price appreciation rate in the country (values jumped 93% from 2018 to 2024). Those stats make it the second-best real estate market in the United States, and the eighth-most affordable.
The city also has the 10th-lowest violent crime rate and the fifth-lowest property crime rate. Among only midsize cities, Surprise ranked as the top place for first-timers.
Similarly to Surprise, Gilbert will add a ton of new construction in the coming years, with the 42nd-most new building permits in the country. The city also boasts the seventh-lowest tax rate and the 18th-highest rate of millennial homeownership (46%). Gilbert also has the 10th-lowest property crime rate and the 15th-lowest violent crime rate, plus a strong job market and home-price appreciation of over 85% compared to 2018.
Also boosting the Phoenix area’s hospitality toward first-time buyers is the area’s above-average quality of life, thanks to factors like year-round sunny weather and high-quality school systems.
“The Phoenix metro area emerged as one of the strongest-performing regions in this year’s rankings, with four of the top 10 cities for first-time home buyers — Surprise, Gilbert, Peoria and Chandler — located within the metro area,” Lupo told Phoenix Agent. “These cities perform well across the factors that matter most to first-time buyers, combining affordability with a healthy housing market and solid quality-of-life fundamentals.”
On the flip side of WalletHub’s list, all but one of the 10 worst cities for first-timers were located in California.