Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal reports on most affordable places to work from home in Minnesota…

The ranking comes from New York-based financial and technology company SmartAsset.

To compile a list of the most affordable places to live in Minnesota, the tech company used a variety of factors, including taxes, homeowner insurance and home costs relative to local median income. (You can see the full list here.)

The list of Minnesota’s most affordable places is below:

1. Montevideo
2. Redwoods Falls
3. International Falls
4. Ostego
5. Hibbing
6. Austin
7. St. Michael
8. Virginia
9. Albert Lea
10. Litchfield

These affordable towns are in a good position to recruit residents and businesses to their location, especially since COVID has moved many people to remote work options and opened the door to living anywhere. So I wanted to take a look at these cities and their broadband ranking – or at least the ranking of their county. Turns out they are all over the place from 31 to 85. Some of the towns listed would definitely rank higher than their county. Monticello, for example,  has a municipal fiber network; Austin has been talking about broadband for years; Redwood Falls was focused on broadband 10 years ago. I’d say, however, that having good broadband and being affordable might boost a community to the top of a “potential new home” list.