Hunting for your first home? Here are the best U.S. cities for first-time buyers.

The city best known for blues music and the Gateway Arch is also a top destination for people looking to buy their first home.

St. Louis, Missouri, offers the best combination of reasonably priced housing and number of properties for sale, with more than two-thirds of available housing in the city defined as affordable, according to a new report from Zillow.

The median sales price for homes in St. Louis is $205,500, according to Redfin data, well below the national median of $384,500. St. Louis is also one of a handful of cities where home prices are expected to decline this year, according to Realtor.com forecasts.

Zillow defines affordable as if homeowners spend no more than 30% of their income on payments, taking into account a 5% down payment and a 6.94% mortgage.

Certainly, for many Americans, purchasing a home remains a major financial challenge. To comfortably afford a typical house, today’s Americans must have a household income of $106,500 — up sharply from $59,000 just four years ago, according to a previous Zillow study.

The interest rate on a 30-year conventional mortgage hit 6.82% this week, according to Freddie Mac, and experts predict rates will stay in the 6.75% to 7% range during the buying season house in spring.

“The good news for homebuyers is that inventory is increasing in some markets,” Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, told CBS MoneyWatch. “Buyers have been holding back over the past few weeks, but a larger supply this spring will bring more buyers back into the market.”

Notably, despite the obstacles to buying a home, many people find ways to make it happen. Homeownership rates in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas increased from 60.6% in 2012 to 61.7% in 2022, an increase of 6.1 million new homeowners, according to an analysis by LendingTree.

Affordability is the key criterion Zillow uses to compose its list, but researchers also took into account the number of households in certain markets headed by someone aged 29 to 43 – the typical age range of first-time buyers Of house.

Zillow also took into account the difficulty of finding a place to rent — a competitive rental market makes it harder to save money to buy a home — which is why more expensive cities like Austin, Texas, and San Antonio, Texas, were still on the list. .

Rounding out Zillow’s ranking of the 10 Best Cities for First-Time Home Buyers:

2. Detroit (63% of homes for sale are affordable)
3. Minneapolis (48%)
4. Indianapolis (50%)
5.Austin, Texas (23%)
6.Pittsburgh (63%)
7. San Antonio (33%)
8. Birmingham, Alabama (47.5%)
9. Kansas City (50.5%)
10. Baltimore (56%)