10 metros where a home costs about $1,000/month Updated on: Jun 13, 2022

Extracted from our homebuying salary calculations that cover the 50 largest metropolitan areas, here's a group of ten areas around the country where you can own a home for about $1,000 a month or pretty close to it -- and sometimes even if you can only make a 10 percent down payment for your purchase, too. Our calculations factor the principal and interest payments for a median-priced existing home in the first quarter of 2022, and we take into account taxes and insurance costs as well. Although the base calculation assumes a 20 percent down payment, each panel also shows costs with just a 10 percent down purchase, where we also include the cost for PMI in our tally.

Fast-rising home prices in most areas mean a decreasing number of metro areas at the $1,000 per month level, but we've included the ten least costly markets in this group, which now range up to about $1250 per month. Continual and significant home price inflation will likely mean we'll need to reset the dollar benchmark for this series sometime this year.

None of these lower-cost places to live to your liking? A median-priced home in Birmingham, Alabama is available for around or just under $1,300 per month, and if you can climb a little higher up the monthly payment ladder, places such as New Orleans or Virginia Beach, Virginia open up to you, too, so there may be other low-cost choices if you're looking to locate or relocate to an area with lower housing costs.

It's also important to remember that these calculations use a median home price for each area; this means that half of the inputs for each metro were homes that sold for less than the number we utilized, so you should be able to find homes at lower costs in each area, too.

Not surprisingly, the lower cost metro areas feature smaller cities, with only the St. Louis and Detroit metro area cracking the top 20 in terms of population. Also, it's important to remember that as we use the median home price in our calculation that half of the homes sold in each market in the fourth quarter of 2021 sold for less than this price. This means that even in areas that didn't make our list of 10, there could still be affordable options for lower-cost homeownership in other areas.

If you're looking for help with a down payment and closing costs, check to see if you qualify for a state-backed homebuyer assistance program, or consider an FHA loan, too.