March is truly a magical month. In the sports world we get March Madness, arguably the most exciting tournament of any sport. It may not be as exciting but in the real estate world, home sales tend to start picking up due to warmer weather.

Since we’re a real estate company that is all about competition, we thought we should celebrate the competitive nature of March Madness. So throughout the tournament, we’re breaking down each represented schools’ real estate market.

In order to have a strong real estate market, homeownership needs to be an affordable aspiration for residents. So for round 1, the college town with the most affordable market wins. For each round, we’ll add in a new layer such as weather or crime rate.

Here’s How We Calculated Affordability

To figure out the most affordable markets, we turned to City-Data.com for recent numbers on median household income and median house value. Using both median income and home value, we can have a more holistic view on each market instead of just letting the lowest median home value win.

Next, we figured out what a typical mortgage payment would cost on each city’s median home value price. We applied the following conditions to figure out each city’s estimated mortgage:

20% down payment

4.17% interest rate (2014 annual average)

1.25% property taxes per year

0.35% home insurance per year

Finally, to figure out affordability, we took each city’s yearly mortgage payment and divided it by median household income in order to figure out what percentage of median income goes towards housing.

For example, Indianapolis (home of Butler University), has a median home value of $117,900. At that price, the mortgage payment with our conditions comes out to $616.79 a month, or $7,401.48 a year. Divided by the median household income of $40,854, we find that 18.12% of an Indianapolis residents income goes towards housing. Therefore the Butler Bulldogs in Indianapolis, with 18.12% of income going towards housing, beat the Texas Longhorns in Austin with 26.58% of income going towards housing.

Scroll all the way to the bottom for a detailed table on each city’s median income, median home value, estimated mortgage, and percentage of income going towards housing.

Edit – round 2 can be found here.

Most Affordable in Each Regional Bracket

Midwest : Buffalo (13.52%)

: Buffalo (13.52%) West: Baylor – Waco, TX 17.69%

Baylor – Waco, TX 17.69% East : Oklahoma – Norman, OK 19.74%

: Oklahoma – Norman, OK 19.74% South : UAB – Birmingham, AL 17.93%

Most Expensive in Each Regional Bracket

Midwest : Northeastern – Boston, MA 45.03%

: Northeastern – Boston, MA 45.03% West : Harvard – Cambridge, MA 45.01%

: Harvard – Cambridge, MA 45.01% East : UC Irvine – Irvine, CA 41.1%

: UC Irvine – Irvine, CA 41.1% South : UCLA – Los Angeles, CA 56.56%

Buzzer Beaters

New Mexico State (22.75%) vs. Kansas (22.79%)

North Dakota State (23.11%) vs. Gonzaga (23.39%)

NC State (24.68%) vs. LSU (24.74%)

Full Regional Brackets

Full Breakdown of Each College Town