Best cities for first-time homebuyers

Home values (median): $138,700
Annual forecasted appreciation: 3.2%

After getting hammered by the Great Recession, Detroit's economy is finally mounting a comeback, but home prices there remain incredibly affordable. Unemployment just hit its lowest level in 16 years. "Detroit went down so far that it can't go any further," says Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. "Prices there are really attractive. Unemployment is going down, and the auto industry is doing relatively well."

Detroit's become less reliant on cars, though. The city's downtown has a growing technology district, thanks to the low prices and support from several high-profile start-up incubators, and there's also growth in health care and financial services.

First published June 16, 2017: 11:47 AM ET

Source: Zillow
The Best cities for first-time homebuyers top 10 is based on Zillow's "First-time Home Buyer Index." The index captures a balance of five metrics: low median home values for an affordable down payment, a strong home value forecast to indicate a good start to growing equity, a larger inventory-to-household ratio to capture available supply, a greater share of listings with price cuts to surface less competitive buying experiences, and a faster breakeven to demonstrate a strong incentive to buy over rent. These five metrics are ordered and metros are scored on a scale from 0 to 10 along a uniform distribution. The five scores are then averaged and the average re-scaled to range from 0 to 10.

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