Home alone

GO west, young house hunter.

Just a little bit west — across the Hudson River to Edison, NJ (above). A study released last week from Homes.com ranked the best and worst cities in the country for first-time solo home buyers.

Edison topped the list because the average mortgage on a one-bedroom property there costs 8.78 percent ($292) of the area’s median monthly income (about $3,326). The median price of one-bedrooms of Edison, which is sandwiched between Elizabeth and New Brunswick, clocks in at an affordable $65,000.

Other metros that offer the most bang for the newbuyer buck are Overland Park, Kan. (where mortgage payments are 8.96 percent of monthly income), Lafayette, La. (10.1 percent), Sterling Heights, Mich. (10.87 percent) and West Palm Beach, Fla. (11.15 percent).

The hardest city to purchase a home alone? Notoriously expensive New York City, of course, where average monthly mortgage payments on a one-bedroom are a whopping 114.55 percent of the median monthly salary. Also unaffordable by these metrics: Detroit; Oxnard, Calif. (between LA and Santa Barbara); Santa Clara, Calif. (in the Bay Area) and Elk Grove, Calif. (not far from Sacramento).

Researchers reviewed 311 towns and cities with populations of more than 100,000 for the report. Their deep dive into solo home-buying was inspired by the number of Americans living without a spouse or partner: 42 percent, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of US Census figures.