Fall River Edges Out New Bedford For First Time Home Buyers

If buying a home is stressful, buying your first home is off the charts.

You have no experience to draw upon. It might seem like too many people are trying to give you too much advice. There's a lot of money on the line, and between real estate agents, home inspectors, mortgage brokers, and banks, it seems like everyone has their hand out, looking for their piece of your cash.

If there is one thing I learned from our first-time experience buying a home, it's that location is everything. You can always change the structure of the home, but you can never change its location.

With home prices skyrocketing and mortgage rates still higher than most people would like, you may have to make some concessions about what you want in a house and where that house can be.

Best Places in Massachusetts for First-Time Home Buyers

We found a great resource in WalletHub, which conducted a study on the best and worst places in Massachusetts to purchase a home as a first-time home buyer. Not surprisingly, It is significantly easier to buy a home in the SouthCoast than in a place like Boston.

While Boston offers a decent quality of life for those who enjoy city living, it is financially challenging to near impossible for most first-time buyers, ranking near the bottom in affordability.

SouthCoast Cities: A Toss-Up

Closer to home, the question is often: Which is the better small city—New Bedford or Fall River?

According to WalletHub, New Bedford barely edges out Fall River in affordability. However, quality of life in Fall River is nearly twice as good as in New Bedford, based on WalletHub’s study. The ranking factors included crime rates, schools, cost of living, and real estate taxes.

If you're choosing between the two SouthCoast cities for your first home, Fall River seems to financially be the better option.

See all the WalletHub data here.