/biz/ - Business & Finance

What region of the USA is optimal for cost of home ownership? Considering finances ALONE, what place makes the most sense?

For this, don't consider any work you do on the property other than maintenance.
Considering property taxes (both city and state), property insurance, potential appreciation of the property, HOA, ability to rent out the unit, etc.
From my research I believe the following are GREAT deals:

>Evanston Wyoming
Wyoming has the absolute lowest property taxes in the country. However, the cost of maintaining a property and the insurance is going to be significantly higher due to terrible weather and strong winds.

Evanston in particular is 30 minutes away from Salt Lake City, so you beenfit from paying basically nothing yearly for home ownership and being near a major metropolitan area. Homes are very cheap in Evanston. You can find a large house for around $300k easily, and many are even lower than that.

>cheapest condo you can find in NYC
the more I look into this, I don't think its a terrible idea. The HOA fees are high but it's actually quite easy to find condos where the total monthly fees including the property taxes are less than what the unit rents out for on market rates.

And it's NYC, so you should be able to find a tenant for your unit within DAYS. You'd be retarded to leave it empty.
So basically, if you can afford the 50,000 down payment or whatever on a unit, you are immediately making some passive income with zero work.

>Eugene OR
I think Eugene Oregon makes a lot of sense right now. it's a quickly growing college town that is close to the ocean and close to Portland OR. property taxes in oregon are middle of the pack but insurance should be decently low due to low risk of natural disaster. Homes are still cheap here but I think in the next decade they will appreciate nicely, as Portland commuter cities similar to Eugene start to increase in population.