There's no question that Miami has become a true international city, maybe even more so than San Francisco and New York. After all, it offers it all -- culture, sports, fine dining, plenty of sunshine and the one thing those other cities don't have: moderate housing prices.

But the folks at ERA Real Estate, the global realty franchise, have identified five lesser-known spots around the country that are now being targeted by buyers from other countries.

"We are seeing an influx of international buyers in these off-the-radar markets," ERA's Frank Malpica said at last month's National Association of Real Estate Editors annual conference in Miami.

ERA's "hidden gems" include Amelia Island, Florida, which it calls a "coastal treasure" 30 miles from Jacksonville, and Nashville, Tennessee, a "big city in a small-town body" that's famous for its music but also boasts nearly 30 institutions of higher learning.

Also on the list are Kingsland, Georgia, on the Atlantic coast three miles from the Florida line; Lake Norman, North Carolina, a 34-mile-long man-made lake

15 miles from downtown Charlotte, and Kennewick, Washington, which is located in the heart of the state's wine country along the Columbia River and has 300 days of sunshine every year.

But back to Miami, where the local real estate board has working agreements with Realtor groups in 126 other countries.

According to Teresa King Kinney, CEO of the Miami Association of Realtors, most international buyers use their Miami residences as vacation homes. Others actually migrate to the United States, and still others use their places to establish U.S. residency so they can send their children to college in this country.

Then there are those who invest here now with the idea that they will exit their home countries sometime in the future, said Ronald Fieldstone, a partner in the Miami law office of Arnstein & Lehr who specializes in immigrant visas.

According to Kinney and Edgardo Defortuna of the Fortune International Group, a high-end real estate firm based in Miami, buyers from China are the most recent international buyers to find Miami.

In the past, Defortuna told the NAREE conference that Chinese buyers have tended to invest in Los Angeles, New York and even Chicago because those cities have large Chinese populations. But now they have discovered that Miami also is a world-class city.

Defortuna told the story of a recent Chinese buyer who was having trouble communicating with a sales agent, so the agent gave the man a list of the 24 units still available in the property. The man marked out four units and gave the list back to the agent.

The thrilled agent thought the man wanted those four units, but it turns out he wanted the 20 he didn't mark out. He wasn't interested in the other four because their unit numbers didn't square well with Chinese superstition.

Although the Chinese are buying here in greater numbers, according to Kinney of the Miami realty association, they still are only eighth in the pecking order of international buyers, with just a 2 percent market

share.

The Realtor association executive also reported that Miami's foreign buyers paid an average of $444,000 per purchase last year, compared to $245,000 statewide.

Foreigners don't believe in mortgages, either. More

than 80 percent in Miami are all-cash buyers versus just 31 percent nationally, she said.

But while million-dollar-and-up estates and condo apartments grab the headlines, they hide the fact that Miami and environs are still relatively inexpensive. The median sales price in the country's eighth-most populous and fourth-largest urban area is still just $282,000 for a single-family residence and $207,000 for a condominium apartment.

Nationally, meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors reported recently that for the first time, the Chinese have supplanted Canadians as the top international buyers in U.S. real estate.

Overall, five countries accounted for 51 percent of all foreign purchases in the one-year period between April 2014 and March 2015, with China and Canada in the lead, followed by Mexico, India and the United Kingdom, NAR said. But the Chinese spent more than twice as much as the Canadians ­- $28.6 billion versus $11.2 billion.

NAR estimated total international sales in America for the period at $104 billion, compared to $92.2 billion for the same period the year before. This 13 percent gain was realized even though the number of transactions was down by 10 percent.

"The amount of money spent ... means international purchasers in the U.S. have become an upscale group of buyers," NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

While international buyers purchase property throughout the country, four states accounted for half of all international sales: Florida (21 percent), California (16 percent), Texas (8 percent) and Arizona (5 percent).

Homebuyers may be missing out on a wide range of programs that can help them afford their purchases -- programs their agents either don't know about or don't want to bother with.

They go under the heading of "down payment assistance," which makes it seem as though they are strictly for low- and moderate-income buyers, or those buying their first homes. But that's hardly the case.

Most of the more than 2,300 government, municipal and nonprofit programs that are available nationwide have some kind of income and/or sales price limitations, according to Rob Chrane of Down Payment Resource, an online database that makes it easy for buyers to find and understand what's available.

But in certain high-cost markets, the income ceiling can exceed 180 percent of the median income for the area. And 36 percent don't include a first-time buyer requirement.

Even with income limits, benefits can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. In Miami-Dade County, Florida, for example, the 39 assistance programs currently available range in benefits from $3,000 to $100,000, according to Chrane.

In Chicago, a family of three to six people earning up to $80,000 has access to 11 different programs, including a $2,000/year federal income tax credit for the life of the mortgage, a grant of 3 percent of the loan amount to use to cover a down payment and closing costs, or an interest-free loan of $5,000 to use as part of the down payment and closing costs.

In Sarasota, Florida, a three-person household with a veteran or military applicant making $50,000 a year and buying a $175,00 house has access to 14 programs, including a two-for-one matching grant up to $5,000 for a down payment and closing costs, a below-market-rate mortgage and a tax credit.

And in San Francisco, a couple -- one person a police officer and the other a teacher, with a combined income of up to $125,000 annually -- has access to five programs, including a "silent" second mortgage for 3 percent of the loan amount plus $6,500 in down payment and closing cost assistance, and a deferred, zero-interest 30-year loan for up to $200,000 in down payment and closing cost help.

Nationally, the average down payment benefit is $7,333, according to the latest count. And across all 2,359 programs now available, the average benefit of any kind, not limited to down payment assistance, is $22,138.

Benefits like that are worth looking into!

Chrane, a longtime real estate and mortgage professional, started building his database in 2007 when his employer, HomeBanc Mortgage, shut down at the beginning of the housing debacle.

He learned about assistance programs at NationsBanc, where he worked previously and where loan officers were required to reach out to low-income buyers. At HomeBanc, on the other hand, Chrane says "almost nobody" worked with eligible purchasers on a regular basis, so loan officers tended not to bother to learn what was available.

He also found that the same is true with realty agents, who tend to work their own particular niches. Moreover, many of the programs' parameters are constantly changing, which makes them complicated and difficult to follow.

"The biggest problem with assistance programs is awareness," says Chrane. "You might not qualify, but you ought to at least look."

It took Chrane several months to "get clarity" about what he was about to wrap his arms around, he says, and more than a half-dozen years to aggregate the details of the thousands of assistance programs into a database that consumers, as well as real estate agents and loan officers, can access.

"It can be overwhelming to find all the possibilities that may work," Chrane says. "Just as we would advise buyers to get prequalified for financing, we also recommend that they determine if there are any ownership programs that fit their personal situations."

The search engine (downpaymentresource.com) tracks programs from 1,250 housing agencies, a little more than a third of which do not include a first-time buyer requirement. The site not only matches buyers to the programs that are available to them but also flags houses listed for sale that are eligible for them to purchase.

All programs are available for single-family houses, including townhouses and condominium apartments; under 17 percent of the assistance programs, two- to four-unit properties are also eligible. In many cases, the programs can be combined with each other and used with all types of loans, including those backed by Uncle Sam.

Nearly 15 percent of programs are aimed specifically at veterans, first responders, educators, persons with disabilities or other special circumstances.

Some 71 percent of the programs currently listed in the database offer help with down payments and closing costs. They include grants -- which need not be paid back -- and no-interest or low-interest second mortgages with payments that may be deferred or forgiven. There are also neighborhood stabilization programs aimed at revitalizing communities hit hard by foreclosures or unemployment.

The average cost of a wedding last year was $31,213, according to popular wedding-planning site The Knot -- a whopping amount that could have been used for a down payment, and then some, on a first house.

RealtyTrac, a real estate information company, massaged the numbers and found that, of the most expensive places to get hitched, San Francisco is the only one where a 5 percent down payment for an average house is greater than the cost of a typical wedding.

Everywhere else, the opposite is true, RealtyTrac found. It is definitely less expensive to use the money you're likely to spend on a wedding for a house instead.

But that begs the question of which is a better choice: a big, boisterous ceremony and party, or your very first home of your own?

Two experts, one on each side of that question, were asked their thoughts. Arguing for buying a home is Matt Phipps, a third-generation Realtor who has held several leadership roles within the National Association of Realtors and who hangs his shingle at Phipps Realty in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Speaking on behalf of a wedding is Leila Lewis, who runs Be Inspired, a Los Angeles-based wedding and lifestyle public relations firm.

Here's what they had to say.

HOUSE -- Matt Phipps, real estate agent:

"Since living in your parents' basement is most likely not a long-term option, it's best to have a sound long-term plan. While it is ultimately your choice whether to keep up with the Jones' expensive taste in weddings or purchase the house down the street from them, I think it's important to truly consider cost versus long-term value.

"The Knot survey found that the average cost of a wedding was at an all-time high last year -- and 45 percent of the couples exceeded their original budget. Considering that that figure doesn't include the cost of a honeymoon, there is no proverbial cherry atop your wedding cake.

"Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors' May sales report shows that the national median price of a single-family home was $219,400. After putting 10 percent down (nearly $22,000), you'd still have $9,000 for new furniture or even some home improvement projects (before hitting the $31,000 average-wedding number).

"The most expensive part of a wedding is the 'venue/catering' aspect, which averages over $11,000, according to the website costofwedding.com. But if you were to put 5 percent down on an average house, you are spending less than $11,000.

"In other words, the one-day (or half-day) rental of a place to have a wedding is MORE than the down payment on the typical house -- a place you could live forever, or at least until you have a gang of kids and need more space.

"Simply put, wedding expenses have escalated to the point in which they are excessive for almost everyone not named Kardashian. Given the abundance of young couples saddled with debt from college loans, coupled with the nationwide increase in rent costs that makes buying cheaper than renting in most places these days, why not invest in a home with your partner rather than splurge on a wedding?

"Americans who have purchased a home in the last two to three years have experienced a median gain of $30,000 in the value of their homes, according to NAR. So which sounds more practical: Dumping $31,000 for the wedding or adding to $30,000 to your net worth?

"The numbers don't lie: Putting your savings toward purchasing a house is a much more sound investment than using those funds toward an extravagant wedding. And your greatest wedding investment should be spent on inviting your family and best friends, who won't care about the per-plate cost. Those folks will dance the night away with you at your wedding, and will be excited to visit you in your new home."

WEDDING -- Leila Lewis, wedding expert:

"Being the founder of a wedding-centric company, I have seen it all -- weddings that are large and extravagant and those that are more intimate and simple. It is an indescribable feeling to watch a bride and groom on their wedding day, surrounded by the love of their family and friends. While it is just one day, it's also a ceremonial beginning of a new life together, and should be given lots of thought and care.

"Sit down with your fiance and discuss your expense priorities together. The most important thing is to be on the same page when making big decisions that will affect your joint future.

"If you do decide to scale back the wedding and save up for your first home, take advantage of the abundant resources online in order to plan your wedding for less. And remember that your first home doesn't have to be your dream home. Homeownership is typically a building block of investments. Don't try to overreach your first time around; there will be many homes to come.

"Ultimately what makes sense for you, as a couple, will be different from what works for other couples. Take the time to have these discussions, keeping an open mind and ear to your partner's opinions.

"Whether you choose to spend a little more on your wedding day or scale back in order to save for a home, it will be the right decision as long as you and your spouse are on the same page. That's the most important start to any marriage!"