This Is America’s Most Stressful City To Buy A House

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 26, 10:13AM EST

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This Is America’s Most Stressful City To Buy A House — © DenisTangneyJr / iStock via Getty Images

The U.S. housing market is on fire, driven by a rising stock market, low mortgage rates, and a new ability of millions of American’s to relocate. According to the carefully followed S&P Corelogic Case-Shiller Index, home prices nationwide rose 19.8% in August, compared to the same month last year. Among the 20 cities tracked by the study, Phoenix topped the list with a 33.3% figure based on the same time period.

Although mortgage rates have ticked up slightly, buyers can still get a 30 year fixed rate of under 3%. And, many can move simply because they can work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This has caused a migration from America’s expensive coastal cities like New York and San Francisco to less expensive cities with a better “quality of life” located inland. Ironically, migration has pushed home prices in these smaller cities up sharply.

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HomeFresh has just released a study titled “The Most Stressful Cities to Buy a Home in the US“. Part of the methodology was based on words used on Twitter. Another part was based on data from the language analysis tool TensiStrength. The terms used for the analysis were: “Moving house, moved house, house offer, estate agents, house sale, house bid, house negotiation, first-time buyer, house contract, property lawyer, property solicitor, buying house, bought house, relocating, relocated, house budget, moving.” The study covered July through September. Among the comments made by the researchers was:

…a new home is also about your environment – and the people with whom you complete the process. That means that home-buying is more stressful in some locations than others.

The average stress level across the U.S. was 47.3%. The city with the highest stress level was Bangor, ME at 70%. It was followed by Richmond, VA at 65.4%, Bremerton, WA at 65%, Lincolnshire, IL at 62.5%, and Bozeman, MT at 62.5%. Obviously, there is no geographic pattern. There is no population size pattern, either.

Among the least stressful cities were Sioux Falls, SD at 21.1%, Louisville, KY at 32.3%, and Lincoln, NE at 33.3%. Also, no discernable pattern.

Click here to read This Is The City Where Homes Are Selling Fastest

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.