10 Top Cities For First-time Homebuyers After A Historically Challenging Year

Baltimore, Mayland.

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• First-time homebuyers have had a hard time finding affordable homes.
• A ranking from Realtor.com shows the best cities in the US for first-time buyers.
• Smaller and suburban cities lead the list, and one region is nowhere to be found.

The current state of the housing market has made it challenging for first-time homebuyers, but a few cities around the US have easier markets than others.

The look of the first-time buyer has changed over the years, with the median age of the first-time buyer jumping to 38 in 2024 from 35 in 2023.

"When we think about first-time homebuyers, a lot of times we think young families and young professionals looking to get into the housing market for the first time," Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner told Business Insider. "And that's still true. But the other thing that is true — and becoming more true — is it's folks who have been in that position for several years now are just finally able to get into it."

With sticky listing prices and mortgage rates predicted to remain unchanged in 2025, first-time homebuyers face additional challenges.

A newly released report from Realtor.com ranked the best markets for first-time homebuyers in 2025. Three Florida cities made the list and two cities in New York did as well, but no cities on the west coast made the list.

This wasn't all that surprising, as plenty of movers have vacated the west looking for more affordable parts of the country, and Berner noted affordability made up 25% of the weighted score.

"Affordability is the main story we talk about, and it's a big struggle with mortgage rates just hovering right under 7% right now — not really going to get a lot of relief on that front," Berner told Business Insider.

Small towns and suburban cities dominated the list, offering a good mix of relief in listing prices as well as high location scores — a metric used by Realtor.com that factors in nearby amenities like daycares, nightlife, and restaurants.

While most of the cities on the list have populations under 200,000 residents, Baltimore is an outlier, with affordable home prices and a population of 585,708, according to census data.

"I think if that median listing price were just a little bit higher, it wouldn't have been here," Berner said. "But because it's a very affordable market, it can compete with some of these smaller towns."

Here are the top 10 cities for first-time homebuyers, according to Realtor.com.