Where can home buyers find the best bang for their dollar and still find an active urban environment? SmartAsset set out to find out. Hint: If you like the Steelers–or Eagles– you'll love the top cities on the list.

SmartAsset looked at data for 200 cities across nine metrics. Specifically, it created a model using data on unemployment rates, price per square foot, high school graduation rates, percent of residents with a college degree, crime rate, entertainment establishment density, average days with precipitation, average number of days with bad weather and walk score. Check out our data and methodology below to see where we got our data and how we put it together to create our final rankings.

This is the third annual study on the most undervalued cities in America. Check out the 2017 version here.

Key Findings:

  • Many cities still offer a great bargain – In total seven cities from last year’s top 10 claimed spots in this year’s top 10. Of the three cities which didn’t appear again, two (Overland Park, Kansas and Fort Collins, Colorado) fell into the top 15. We were missing data for the third city – Augusta, Georgia – so it was not included in this year’s study.
  • California is overrated – According to our model, the quality of life in California cities does not match the price residents pay to live there. For example, our model estimates that San Francisco is one of the best cities to live in with a projected value of $691 per square foot. However the actual value per square foot there is nearly $972 per square foot. While our model ranks California cities well in terms of quality of life the ongoing housing crisis forces the housing costs up.
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