Aspiring homeowners trying to get on the property ladder in California might have a harder time than most other Americans, according to a recent study by personal finance platform WalletHub.

The platform conducted an analysis ranking 300 U.S. cities according to their affordability, real estate market value and quality of life. It found that eight out of 10 of the worst cities in the country for first-time homebuyers are in California.

The very worst was Berkeley, which scored 300th overall, 297th in the affordability rank, 263rd on the real estate market rank and 281st in the quality of life rank, followed by Santa Monica, which was the worst for affordability while scoring 276th for real estate market and 188th for quality of life.

Anchorage, Alaska, ranked as the third-worst city for first-time homebuyers (298th overall), Santa Barbara was fourth (297th), followed by Oakland (296th), San Francisco (295th), Los Angeles (294th), Glendale (293rd) and Costa Mesa (292nd). The tenth-worst city for first-time buyers was New York, New York (291st).

Newsweek reached out to WalletHub for comment by email on Thursday morning.

With mortgage rates still hovering around the 7 percent mark and home prices remaining historically high compared to pre-pandemic times, buying a home has become a tricky affair for anyone getting on the market for the very first time. But in California, one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, it’s even more challenging.

In June, the median sale price of a home in the Golden State was $858,600, up 7.8 percent compared to a year earlier, according to Redfin. During the same month, the median sale price of a home at the national level was nearly half that price, at $442,525, up 4 percent year-over-year.

In Berkeley, one of the most-renowned college towns in the nation, home prices are even higher than at the state level. In June, the median sale price of a home in the city on the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay was $1,530,000, up 7.4 percent year-over-year.

The popular beach resort town of Santa Monica in Los Angeles County beats Berkeley in terms of prices. In June, the median sale price of a home was set at a staggering $1,672,000, up 4.2 percent from a year earlier.

A recent Harvard University study, “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2024,” found that buying a home in California became increasingly unattainable in 2023, especially in Bay Area cities like San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara and in a metropolis like Los Angeles.

Median home prices in these cities were up to 11 times higher than the average annual wage of nearly $113,000 last year. Housing costs significantly outpaced income growth, leaving first-time homebuyers with little opportunity to save enough to get on the property ladder.