Buying a home in Idaho is still pretty cheap

Idaho home prices may have climbed over the last decade or so (leaving some natives clutching their hearts with sticker shock), but homes here look pretty darn affordable to a lot of outsiders.

A national real estate company has done a study of home prices around the U.S., looking at 2,200-square-foot houses with four bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms in 310 markets. Last week it released its most recent rankings.

The most affordable market was Grayling, Mich., where the average price of such a home was $112,675. In the most expensive market, La Jolla, Calif., a comparable home cost an average of $2,125,000.

The two Idaho markets included in the report were much closer to the low end than they were to the high end. In Boise, the report found, that average home costs $214,446. In Coeur d’Alene, it costs $203,542.

The national average across these 310 markets was $363,401.

But the Idaho markets aren’t on the cusp of being included in the list of the top ten most affordable markets. Coldwell Banker says there are 84 U.S. markets (27 percent of the markets researched) in which the sample home price averaged under $200,000.

*provided by IBR