Four Upstate places among the state’s most affordable to live

Listen to this article

Four of the 10 most affordable places to live in South Carolina are in the Upstate, according to a ranking system used by SmartAsset, a financial technology company that provides personal finance advice on the Internet.

Sixth-ranked Fountain Inn was highest of the Upstate places, followed by Five Forks, Parker and Mauldin at seven, eight and nine. The toped ranked place was Irmo.

These communities were ranked on an affordability index weighing property taxes, homeowners’ insurance fees and mortgage payments relative to income, according to data released by SmartAsset. Those measures were combined to consider practicality and not to find the cheapest places to live.

Fountain Inn had an affordability index score of 45.35 and for Five Forks it was 45.12, not far ahead of Parker’s 43.69, but some of the individual measures had large gaps. The median income in Five Forks is more than triple that of Parker, $110,85 vs. $30,572, but so is the average annual mortgage payment — $12,554 compared to $3,128. Irmo’s index rating was 50.21.

Smart Asset ranked Greenville last month as the eighth best metro in the country where buying is better than renting. A SmartAsset analysis determined that it takes 1.7 years for the cost of renting to exceed the cost of owning a home in Greenville.