By Jason Stone | Surprise Independent
As Surprise’s population continues to grow, new homebuyers are finding a relatively affordable experience in the city.
A newly released study from online finance site WalletHub ranked Surprise third in its latest “Most Affordable Cities for Home Buyers” list.
WalletHub studied 300 U.S. cities by nearly a dozen metrics, including home purchase and maintenance costs, tax rates and vacancy rates.
Surprise finished just behind two Michigan cities — Flint and Detroit — on the full national list, and tops among midsize cities, or those with between 150,000 and 300,000 people.
WalletHub editors found Surprise showed strong growth in property values with the 18th-highest median home price appreciation among the 300 cities in the study. But the overall cost of homeownership is lower because of the city’s eighth-lowest median real estate tax rate.
