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Aurora makes list of best places to live

The City of Aurora has been included on a top 30 list of the best cities to live based on the affordability of housing for families, according to a study released this week by HomeUnion, an online real estate investment management firm.

HomeUnion published a list of the 30 best places for families to live based on housing affordability and school quality.

For the second consecutive year, Blue Springs, Mo., a suburb of Kansas City, topped HomeUnion’s list with a median home price of $159,700. Zip codes in Oklahoma City and St. Louis placed second and third, respectively in the rankings.

Aurora was the only city in Illinois included in the annually published ranking by HomeUnion. Click here to visit Aurora’s website.

“For the past two years, we have been tracking metros with the highest housing affordability and best school districts,” explains Steve Hovland, director of research for HomeUnion. “As home prices continue to increase in many coastal markets, particularly in the western U.S., we are seeing the best opportunities for first-time home buyers with families in the center of the country. These areas are also good places for single-family rental (SFR) buyers to invest in housing. In fact, we are particularly bullish on Chicago, Cleveland and Indianapolis for SFR investors, and zip codes from all three of these metro areas earned spots within the top 10.”

Here are the 30 best places for families to live based on housing affordability and school quality:

Methodology for the study: HomeUnion included the most affordable zip code in each metro area where the average school rating was in the 80^th percentile or higher. Owner-occupied, single-family homes that sold for more than $30,000 during late 2016 and early 2017 were used to determine the median sales price. Each zip code required at least 30 transactions to be included.

About HomeUnion
HomeUnion is an online real estate investment management firm. Based in Irvine, Calif., it provides all the services needed for individuals to invest remotely in rental properties. The company uses a combination of research and proprietary analytics to incorporate data on over 110 million homes and 200,000 neighborhoods into their database, and then delivers its solutions to an on-the-ground infrastructure that currently serves 11 locations. HomeUnion’s role spans the lifecycle of the investment transaction: identifying sound investments, handling all aspects of acquisition, maximizing income, protecting asset value, and selling the asset when the time comes.

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Ray Hanania

Ray Hanania is an award-winning opinion columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.  

His award winning columns can be found at www.HANANIA.COM Subscribe FREE today

Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.

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