Greeley and Longmont Named Top Cities for First Time Homebuyers

According to the Denver Business Journal, if you are a first time home buyer and live in Northern Colorado, Longmont and Greeley are your top choices.

The online site Wallethub is the organization that did the research for the study, and examined 300 U.S. cities. They looked at three different variables to determine a cities ranking:

• Housing Affordability
• Real Estate Market
• Living Environment

Their term for "city" also focuses in on the city proper and excludes any metro geographical area. Both Greeley and Longmont fall in the "small cities" category of the research since both areas have populations less than 150,000 people.

In the overall rankings, Greeley falls in at number 21 on the list. That is when you combine the large, medium, and small cities on one list. The city ranked very high on the list in both real estate market rank and living environment rank. When ranking only small cities, Greeley rises to number 13 on the list.

Longmont fared even better, with a ranking of number seven on the small cities list and number nine on the overall list. For "living environment", Longmont actually topped all U.S. cities with a number one ranking.

How did other Colorado cities fare?

#10: Thornton

#13: Arvada

#15: Colorado Springs

#30: Fort Collins

#72: Denver

#116: Boulder

While Denver scored very high in the overall survey, experts say the possibility is there for the ranking to get worse as the Colorado Capital experiences the highest rise in home prices in the nation with Fort Collins not too far behind.