Cheapest and most expensive states to buy a home

Craig Johnson | September 9th, 2019

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In the modern era, homeownership has become attainable to more Americans, but prices are steadily rising. Still, there are locations around the country where you can buy an affordable home.

Study: Here are the cheapest & more expensive homes by state

A new study from financial tech firm SmartAsset shows where in the United States it’s cheapest and most expensive to buy a home. Key findings in the report include that:

West Virginia is the cheapest state to buy a home in America.
Massachusetts was rated the most expensive place in the U.S. to buy a home.

To arrive at the findings, SmartAsset analyzed data from 48 states and Washington, D.C. (Delaware and Louisiana were not included due to incomplete data) related to property tax rate, median home prices, median listing price per square foot, home values and average closing costs.

Finally, states with the highest average ranking were assigned a score of 100 to 0, from least to most expensive respectively.

If you’re looking to purchase a home, here’s what you need to know and where you may need to go:

Here are the 10 cheapest states to buy a home
Rank	State	Median list price	Index
1	West Virginia	$169,000	100.00
2	Arkansas	$179,900	97.80
3	Alabama	$219,900	90.66
4	Mississippi	$189,000	90.11
5	Oklahoma	$193,000	89.01
6	Indiana	$195,000	85.71
7	Kentucky	$199,000	82.42
8	Missouri (tie)	$193,000	76.92
9	South Carolina (tie)	$250,000	76.92
10	Ohio	$180,000	75.27

The top 10 priciest states to buy a home are exclusively on the East and West coasts, except for Hawaii.

Here are the most expensive states to buy a home
Rank	State	Medium list price	Index
49	Massachusetts	$479,900	0.00
48	New Jersey	$349,000	1.65
47	District of Columbia	$599,000	2.75
46	California	$550,000	3.85
44	Washington (tie)	$425,000	4.40
44	New York (tie)	$418,000	4.40
43	Hawaii	$632,500	6.04
42	Connecticut	$330,000	6.59
41	New Hampshire	$310,000	8.24
40	Maryland	$330,000	9.34

See the full list at SmartAsset here.

No matter what state you live in, sound money-saving principles apply when you’re trying to buy a place. If you’re wondering how that process works, here’s how to buy a house in nine simple steps.