It depends on whether this is an investment or the home you'll live in, because the two get judged by different math. If it's an investment, look at cash-on-cash return (what the rent covers against the mortgage payment and expenses) plus the long-term appreciation case for that market. If it's your home, it's a lifestyle tradeoff. Plenty of people move to a lower-cost area on purpose, buying a modest home on one income so a spouse doesn't have to work, and that can be the right call for a household even if it isn't the best pure investment. On appreciation, cheap doesn't automatically mean stagnant. A few once-cheap markets (Boise, North Idaho, Eastern Washington) have matched or beaten expectations over the past couple of decades. That said, fully built-out, supply-constrained metros like Southern California, the Bay Area, and New York have structural scarcity that easier-to-build markets generally lack, and that scarcity has historically supported long-run pricing. Nobody can promise one market outperforms the other. Weigh resale risk honestly, and don't assume the cheaper metro appreciates like the constrained one.