National median home price is $410k[1]. Texas is less than $300k[2]. Only thing that's unrealistic is most people who buy a house for $400k will probably get an FHA loan and put 3% down so will have a higher payment because of (1) mortgage insurance and (2) borrowing more money.

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS [2]: https://www.zillow.com/home-values/6915/san-antonio-tx/

Those are just some medians I either Googled or LLM'd to act as defaults. You can click that sentence and change all those values to estimate.

Atlanta, Charlotte, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Chicago, probably many others

Are you in CA, NY, or MA? I wonder if your scale is skewed.

How close do you consider near? <400k is within 30 minutes of a major Hub in a lot of the US.

Indianapolis... but it's drying up fast (avg price is almost $400k, now, but there are still decent choices in older neighborhoods)

North side of Indy (Carmel, Fishers, Geist) is listed as one of the best places to live in the US.

>Except maybe Texas, where else can you buy a house/apt in the US near a major job center for only 400k?

Rank cities from most to least negative characterizations of their residents and/or politics on HN.

That'll approximately be your list.

Pittsburgh

Definitely not a major job center for tech