<p>Places with the lowest housing prices are not necessarily the best places to invest in real estate. Sometimes prices are low because the local economy is in decline, and you’re just buying into future losses. You might do better to invest more in a place where real estate prices are appreciating. </p>
<p>But if you’re just looking for cheap, real estate prices tend to be low in parts of the industrial Midwest (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana), the Great Plains (Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, S Dakota), and much of the South (West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, S Carolina, N Carolina; the big outlier is Virginia where prices are closer to those in the Northeast). In the Northeast, Pennsylvania tends to be much cheaper than other states.</p>
<p>There’s also a lot of local variation, however. For example, in Michigan housing prices in Ann Arbor are on average 24% higher than in the Detroit metro area. But in Ohio, housing prices in Columbus are 17% less than in Cleveland.</p>
<p>If we take Columbus, Ohio as a benchmark, here are some college town average housing price comparisons:</p>
<p>Norman, OK (U Oklahoma) -9%
St. Louis, MO (WUSTL) -8%
Nashville, TN (Vanderbilt) -5%
Lexington, KY (U Kentucky) - 4%
Lincoln, NE (U Nebraska) -3%
Fayetteville, AR (U Arkansas) - 2%
Lafayette, IN (Purdue) -1%
Raleigh, NC (NC State) -1%
Tuscaloosa, AL (U Alabama) +1%
Durham, NC (Duke) +1%
Pittsburgh, PA (Pitt, Carnegie Mellon) +2%
Knoxville, TN (U Tennessee) +7%
Tucson, AZ (U Arizona) +7%
Bloomington, IN (U Indiana) +8%
South Bend, IN (Notre Dame) +8%
Austin, TX (U Texas) +10%
Stillwater, OK (Oklahoma State) +11%
Baton Rouge, LA (LSU) +12%
Atlanta, GA (Georgia Tech, Emory) +13%
Columbia, MO (U Missouri) + 14%
Blacksburg, VA (VaTech) +17%
Gainesville, FL (U Florida) +19%
Manhattan, KS (Kansas State) +20%
New Orleans, LA (Tulane) +20%
Ames, IA (Iowa State) +26%
Houston, TX (Rice) +38%
Chapel Hill, NC (UNC-Chapel Hill) +39%
Ithaca, NY (Cornell) +41%
Morgantown, WV (WVU) +42%
Madison, WI (U Wisconsin) +43%
Ann Arbor, MI (U Michigan) +45%
Charlottesville, VA (UVA) +45%
Minneapolis, MN (U Minnesota) +49%
Chicago, IL (U Chicago, Northwestern) + 73%
Providence, RI (Brown) +75%
Philadelphia, PA (Penn) +79%
Seattle, WA (U Washington) +80%
Burlington, VT (UVM) +83%
New Haven, CT (Yale) +89%
New Jersey (Princeton, Rutgers) +95%
Boston, MA (Harvard, MIT) +122%
Los Angeles, CA (UCLA, USC) +153%
San Diego, CA (UCSD) +156%
Oakland/Berkeley, CA (UC Berkeley) +175%
Manhattan, New York, NY (Columbia, NYU) +472%</p>