Where to Buy
How San Antonio stacks up to the best cities for first-time homebuyers

How easy is it to buy your first home in San Antonio? Not as easy as other parts of Texas, according to WalletHub's rankings of the best and worst cities for first-time homebuyers.
The personal finance site compared 300 cities of varying sizes across across 23 key indicators of market attractiveness, affordability, and quality of life. Broken down into weighted metrics, that means things such as cost of homeowners insurance, median home-price appreciation, recession recovery, job market, and even weather were taken into consideration.
San Antonio ranks No. 136 overall. While our real estate market is near the top (No. 42), our affordability ranking is one of the very worst (No. 234). And we clock in at a mediocre No. 114 for quality of life.
North Texas in particular shines on this list, taking the top three spots: McKinney is No. 1, Frisco is second, and Allen is third. Richardson sneaks in at No. 7, and Denton (No. 11), Carrollton (No. 18), and Grand Prairie (No. 21) also rank highly.
Elsewhere in the Lone Star State, Austin ranks No. 86, Dallas appears at No. 120, and Houston is No. 186.
Not surprisingly, four of the bottom five cities are in California: Santa Monica, Oakland, and Berkeley join Miami Beach, with Santa Barbara coming in dead last.