New Real Estate Indicator Identifies Easiest U.S. Regions for Home Buying

A new real estate indicator identifies several U.S. regions that are easiest to purchase a property in.

Iroquois County, Illinois, has the lowest home-buying difficulty when the counties are ranked according to the NBC News Home Buyer Index. 

Sorted by the four contributing factors, the counties listed below were the least challenging areas:

1. Cost: Of the surveyed counties in the United States, Iroquois County, Illinois, has the most economical or affordable housing market.
2. Competition: Somervell County, Texas, boasts the least competitive housing market, providing a reassuring environment for those looking to purchase a property.
3. Scarcity: Imperial County, California, is a haven for homebuyers, with its housing market being the least scarce among the measured places, offering a sense of relief in the face of a challenging market.
4. Economic Instability: Macon County, Tennessee, had the most stable local economy of the measured locations.

Cost, competition, scarcity, and economic instability are all assessed by the index.

Cost, which is the most heavily weighted component, is a measure of a home’s price in relation to household earnings, inflation, and other expenses like insurance premiums, as per NBC News.

Competition considers factors like the number of purchasers on the market for a property or the degree of demand in a given area.

Scarcity refers to the number of properties posted for sale in a certain location and the anticipated number of new listings in the upcoming month.

Finally, interest rates, unemployment, and market volatility are taken into account when determining economic instability.

NBC News created the NBC News Home Buyer Index in collaboration with housing specialists, such as a real estate industry analyst and a bank economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

The index score, which ranges from zero to 100, indicates how difficult it is to purchase a property in a U.S. county. According to NBC, the higher the value, the more difficult it is to purchase a home in that location.

However, Joe Murphy, a data editor at NBC News who co-created the index, said that it is crucial to take the index rank into account when comparing counties with one another because “ranks provide context to the scores.”