The cheapest place to buy a home in Arizona is this small desert town

Home prices may finally be dipping in the Valley, but that hardly makes them affordable. With new housing stock primarily targeted toward the rich, prospective homebuyers are looking farther and farther afield for a place to call their own.

If they’re willing to look really far afield, they could get a hell of a deal.

The financial site MoneyLion recently crunched the numbers to determine the cheapest place to buy a home in each state. The site used data from the Zillow Home Value Index and the U.S. Census American Community Survey, considering only cities and towns with at least 100 residents. The result, as one might expect, is a bunch of out-of-the-way places.

That’s certainly true for Arizona. In the Grand Canyon State, the cheapest homes can be found in the tiny unincorporated community of Bowie. Technically a census-designated place, Bowie sits just off Interstate 10 in Cochise County in the southeast corner of the state, about a half-hour from the border with New Mexico. An hour and a half the other direction is Tucson. As of the 2020 census, Bowie had a population of 406 people, with a median household income of just $36,250.

But the home prices! According to MoneyLion’s analysis, a single-family home in Bowie can be had for just $66,132. Whip out a handy mortgage calculator, and with a 20% down payment, you’re probably looking at a monthly mortgage of less than $700.

Besides bargain basement prices, what does Bowie have to offer? Well, it sits near the Dos Cabezas Mountains, the Chiricahua National Monument and the Fort Bowie National Historic Site, its namesake. TripAdvisor recommends checking out several vineyards in the area.

Just watch out for that one neighbor. Bowie is the fictional residence of Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo, with “Rambo III” partially taking place in the town. (Though it was shot in California.) Whether that makes you feel more or less safe is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

If you want even cheaper homes, there are some spots outside of Arizona that came even lower on MoneyLion’s list. Those include Sedan, Kansas ($39,571); Beecher, Michigan ($40,230); and Drexel, Ohio ($53,456).