Editor’s Note: This is not investment advice, and we are not financial advisers.
Suppose real estate is the most significant investment a majority of people make in their lifetime. In that case, it’s best to understand the places in Arizona with best potential return on investment.
After working in real estate adjacent roles for over a decade, I had the hypothesis that the best place to buy for a return on investment would be up-and-coming cities. Smaller cities where crime might be high now, but people still move to.
To test my hypothesis, we are going to look at places in Arizona that are growing faster than average, but where home prices are below average, and crime rates are higher than average.
In everyday terms, these might be “deals”. The best deal in Arizona at the moment according to Saturday Night Science? That would be Benson.
1.6% population growth · 2.0% home price growth
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
1.6% population growth · 2.7% home price growth
hatcher is a town in Graham County, Arizona, United States. According to the 2010 Census, the population of the town is 4,865. It is part of the Safford Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Thatcher is the home of Eastern Arizona College, a college that offers two year degrees and includes a nursing school
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
1.2% population growth · 2.7% home price growth
Cave Creek is a town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is 27mi northeast of Phoenix. According to the 2010 census, the population of the town was 5,015.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
1.5% population growth · 1.9% home price growth
Located in
Navajo County, Arizona
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
0.7% population growth · -0.1% home price growth
Located in
Maricopa County, Arizona
Litchfield Park is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is twenty miles northwest of Phoenix. According to the 2010 census, the population of the city is 5,476.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.4% population growth · -3.3% home price growth
Located in
Maricopa County, Arizona
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
0.4% population growth · 3.1% home price growth
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
6.0% population growth · 0.2% home price growth
Located in
Maricopa County, Arizona
Tolleson is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population of the city is 6,545.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.5% population growth · 2.7% home price growth
Located in
Gila County, Arizona
Globe is a city in Gila County, Arizona, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 7,532. The city is the county seat of Gila County. Globe was founded c. 1875 as a mining camp. Mining, tourism, government and retirees are most important in the present-day Globe economy.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.8% population growth · 1.4% home price growth
Located in
Coconino County, Arizona
Page is a city in Coconino County, Arizona, United States, near the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 7,247.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Arizona’s statewide median.
Arizona statewide median: $423,330
On the map
Where Arizona’s best buys are
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How do you determine the best places to buy a home in Arizona for 2026?
We were in real estate for almost five years and have worked on this site for over a decade. Suffice it to say we’ve put a lot of thought into finding an excellent place to buy a home.
So all that thinking has come to this moment where we get to spell out how we’d approach finding an up-and-coming place to live in Arizona. Put differently, the analysis will try to find places in Arizona with undervalued homes relative to pent-up demand using Saturday Night Science.
To do that, we looked at the most recent American Community Survey Census data for 2020-2024 and compared it to the previous vintage. Specifically, we used the following criteria:
- Y-o-Y Change In Population (People want to live here)
- Y-o-Y Change In Median Home Prices (People are willing to pay for it)
- Home Prices Relative To The State Average (It’s still kinda cheap)
We want places that are growing, have seen home prices increase in recent years, and are still “cheap” for Arizona, with these caveats: home prices had to be within 20% of the state average, home prices increased in the last year, and the city had above 5,000 people.
So of the 435 cities and towns in Arizona, only 56 places made it through our initial filters to even be considered.
We then ranked each place from 1 to 56 for the above criteria, with 1 being the best. We averaged the rankings to create a “best place to buy” index, with the place having the lowest index being the best.
Turns out that Benson is the best potential gem in the not-so-rough in the Grand Canyon State. The median Arizona home is 32 years old — old enough that it pays to compare home warranty plans before something expensive breaks.
The full plate
Best Places To Buy A Home In Arizona
Click any column to sort. Search by city name.
| Rank | City | Population | Median Home Price | Population Change | Home Price Increase |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Benson | 5,417 | $253,542 | 1.6% | 2.0% |
| 2 | Thatcher | 5,439 | $350,905 | 1.6% | 2.7% |
| 3 | Cave Creek | 5,091 | $1,054,562 | 1.2% | 2.7% |
| 4 | Snowflake | 6,444 | $344,541 | 1.5% | 1.9% |
| 5 | Litchfield Park | 6,916 | $525,411 | 0.7% | -0.1% |
| 6 | Guadalupe | 5,272 | $243,844 | -0.4% | -3.3% |
| 7 | Youn | 7,015 | $343,386 | 0.4% | 3.1% |
| 8 | Tolleson | 7,668 | $394,929 | 6.0% | 0.2% |
| 9 | Globe | 7,195 | $238,040 | -0.5% | 2.7% |
| 10 | Page | 7,345 | $378,791 | -0.8% | 1.4% |
| 11 | Wickenburg | 8,059 | $513,341 | 7.9% | -2.0% |
| 12 | Winslow | 8,773 | $203,634 | -0.7% | 1.3% |
| 13 | Safford | 10,239 | $287,457 | 0.2% | 2.9% |
| 14 | Sedona | 9,777 | $909,102 | 0.1% | 1.9% |
| 15 | Camp Verde | 12,521 | $431,372 | 1.9% | 1.6% |
| 16 | Show Low | 12,102 | $436,997 | 1.6% | 0.2% |
| 17 | Chino Valley | 13,602 | $500,150 | 1.7% | 0.9% |
| 18 | Cottonwood | 12,580 | $397,513 | 0.3% | 1.2% |
| 19 | Coolidge | 16,636 | $270,015 | 8.7% | -0.8% |
| 20 | Paradise Valley | 12,611 | $3,474,597 | -0.1% | 8.2% |
| 21 | Payson | 16,622 | $446,820 | 0.8% | -0.3% |
| 22 | Douglas | 15,981 | $173,569 | -0.8% | 0.3% |
| 23 | Somerton | 14,574 | $271,558 | 1.3% | 2.5% |
| 24 | Eloy | 17,433 | $275,410 | 4.6% | 2.1% |
| 25 | Nogales | 19,841 | $220,632 | 0.4% | 2.4% |
| 26 | Fountain Hills | 23,789 | $670,052 | 0.1% | 1.2% |
| 27 | Florence | 25,570 | $333,593 | -1.5% | -0.7% |
| 28 | Kingman | 34,375 | $273,783 | 1.6% | 0.4% |
| 29 | Sahuarita | 35,862 | $353,394 | 2.4% | -1.1% |
| 30 | San Luis | 37,337 | $238,911 | 3.7% | 1.7% |
| 31 | El Mirage | 36,088 | $342,377 | 0.7% | -0.6% |
| 32 | Bullhead City | 42,496 | $299,832 | 0.7% | -0.2% |
| 33 | Apache Junction | 41,058 | $376,628 | 3.3% | 2.0% |
| 34 | Prescott | 47,400 | $605,543 | 1.4% | 1.1% |
| 35 | Sierra Vista | 45,155 | $298,883 | -0.1% | -0.4% |
| 36 | Oro Valley | 48,162 | $506,584 | 1.2% | 0.3% |
| 37 | Prescott Valley | 49,179 | $462,396 | 2.4% | 1.6% |
| 38 | Marana | 56,938 | $436,915 | 4.5% | 0.0% |
| 39 | Maricopa | 67,163 | $346,284 | 6.6% | -1.5% |
| 40 | Queen Creek | 71,867 | $632,223 | 8.3% | -0.3% |
| 41 | Lake Havasu City | 58,359 | $463,714 | 0.6% | 0.5% |
| 42 | Casa Grande | 60,905 | $319,032 | 5.8% | -0.2% |
| 43 | Flagstaff | 76,445 | $656,480 | 0.1% | 0.5% |
| 44 | Goodyear | 107,645 | $469,424 | 4.6% | -0.4% |
| 45 | Avondale | 92,477 | $398,568 | 2.0% | 0.0% |
| 46 | Yuma | 100,139 | $301,508 | 1.7% | 2.5% |
| 47 | Surprise | 154,948 | $422,473 | 3.6% | -0.1% |
| 48 | Peoria | 196,906 | $488,596 | 1.3% | 0.8% |
| 49 | Tempe | 188,065 | $468,281 | 0.9% | 0.5% |
| 50 | Gilbert | 280,262 | $572,507 | 3.4% | 0.5% |
| 51 | Glendale | 252,833 | $407,332 | 1.1% | 0.6% |
| 52 | Scottsdale | 243,821 | $858,022 | 0.7% | 2.7% |
| 53 | Chandler | 280,136 | $524,156 | 0.7% | 0.3% |
| 54 | Mesa | 511,764 | $435,134 | 0.8% | 0.6% |
| 55 | Tucson | 547,073 | $324,023 | 0.7% | -0.2% |
| 56 | Phoenix | 1,642,323 | $410,169 | 1.1% | 0.6% |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024 via Saturday Night Science. 56 Arizona cities cleared the filters.
Summary
Summary: The Best Places To Purchase A House In Arizona for 2026
There’s our analysis of the best places to buy a house in Arizona. And, to be clear, we aren’t necessarily saying these places are the best places to live, just that it looks like they might be in a couple of years based on the data.
In fact, every place in the following table meets our criteria, so even though it may not look super long, remember we started off with all 435 places in the state.
The best cities to buy a house in Arizona are Benson, Thatcher, Cave Creek, Snowflake, Litchfield Park, Guadalupe, Youn, Tolleson, Globe, and Page.
So if we could rent or buy in these cities, we’d definitely buy. Not sold on Arizona? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Best Places To Buy A House In Arizona FAQs
What is the best city in Arizona to buy a house?
Benson is the best place to buy a house in Arizona for 2026. Its population is growing, home values are rising, and the median home still costs $253,542. Thatcher and Cave Creek are next on the list.
What are the best cities to buy a home in Arizona?
The best cities to buy a house in Arizona are Benson, Thatcher, Cave Creek, Snowflake, Litchfield Park, Guadalupe, Youn, Tolleson, Globe, and Page. Only 56 of the 435 places in Arizona cleared our filters on growth and home prices.
How much does a house cost in Benson?
The median home value in Benson is $253,542, versus $423,330 across Arizona. Across the full top ten, the median home runs $347,723.
How do you pick the best places to buy a home in Arizona?
We look for Arizona places where the population is growing, home prices are climbing, and homes are still cheap relative to the state average, using Census American Community Survey data. Cities that hit all three get the highest Buy Index scores.
Is this a guarantee home values will go up?
No. This is not investment advice — just where the data points to potential value. The Buy Index says these markets look healthier than most of Arizona, not that any single house is a good deal.
