Dayton has some of the best deals in the nation for buying a home compared to renting, according to Trulia’s Winter 2012 Rent vs. Buy Index released this week.

Trulia is a web site for local home and rental listings and information on local markets. The company tracked whether it is more affordable to rent or buy a home in America’s 100 largest metropolitan areas.

The Trulia index ranked Dayton third in the nation for home affordability compared to renting behind Detroit and Oklahoma City. Trulia said it compared the asking prices for rental units and for-sale homes on its website between Dec. 1, 2011 and Feb. 29, 2012.

Home price declines and tightening rental markets have made homeownership more affordable than renting in all but two of the 100 largest U.S. metros, according to Trulia. Renting was a better deal than buying in Honolulu and San Francisco.

Trulia said it calculates the price-to-rent ratio by estimating the ratio of asking sales prices to asking rents, after adjusting for attributes of the properties and their locations.

A sharp decline in home prices combined with historically low interest rates made homeownership in the Dayton area more affordable than renting by the widest margin in more than a decade in 2011, according to the real estate brokerage firm Marcus & Millichap last year, which has offices in Cincinnati.