Hoover ranks high on national home construction list

Published 3:16 pm Tuesday, April 18, 2017

HOOVER – Hoover is among the top locations in the United States to build a “forever home,” according to a report by a personal finance website.

GoodCall.com ranked Hoover at No. 46 in the country in its list of “2017 Best Cities to Build a Forever Home.”

GoodCall reviewed data from 468 cities nationwide.

Hoover was ranked in the top 10 percent for its comparative custom home cost, growing home values, affordability, population, educational values and low unemployment and crime rates.

The only other Alabama cities listed in the top 100 were Huntsville at No. 56 and Tuscaloosa at No. 58.

The rankings were based on the cost to build a custom home (30 percent), cost of living (20 percent), home value recovery (20 percent), crime rate (10 percent), net migration (5 percent), unemployment (5 percent), college education (5 percent) and high school education (5 percent).

The full report can be found at GoodCall.com/data-center/2017-best-cities-build-forever-home/.

Earlier this year, GoodCall analysts listed the Best Cities to Buy a Forever Home. But that list, which featured a lot of cities in Texas, raised the question: What if you are looking for a place to build your dream home instead of buy?

Analysts continued to crunch the data and determined the Best Cities to Build a Forever Home. These are cities where building a custom home is affordable, as is the general cost of living. The top cities are generally great places to live, with lower crime and unemployment rates, where residents tend to be more educated. The cities are growing and saw significant increases in home values as they recovered from the 2009 recession.

Edmond, Okla., came in at No. 1, propelled by its relatively low cost for a custom home (an average of $526,460), low crime rate (17 per 1,000 residents), and 22-percent gains in home value since the recession.

The Oklahoma City suburb has an estimated 90,000 residents. Those Edmond residents seem to value education; more than 50 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree and more than 95 percent have at least a high school diploma.

The other top cities to build were Frisco, Texas; Flower Mound, Texas; Round Rock, Texas; and Rochester Hills, Mich.

Other highlights of the report included:

-Five of the top 10 cities were in Texas, and they all ranked in the top 10 percent of cities for the low cost of a custom home.

-Most of the top cities are in the Midwest and Mid-South.

-Cities with the lowest costs for custom homes also tend to be areas where home value growth was modest or nearly stagnant.

-Cities with high home value growth tend to be much less affordable–in many cases the cost for a custom home was more than 15 times higher than the area’s median income.