Iowa City Best Place in the United States to Start Over

Iowa may be full of , but it does have at least one redeeming quality and a built-in place for those who want to use the New Year for a fresh start.

According to Sperling's BestPlaces, the Hawkeye State is home to the best city in the United States to start over in 2012, which is pretty handy considering the aforementioned. That place is none other than Iowa City, which came in at No. 1 in the survey. The survey resulted from a compilation of governmental data analyzed by Sperling's.

Bert Sperling told Yahoo! Finance that, "Iowa City really is a nice town ... It has an attractive downtown, a well-educated population and a great community feel to it."

Midwest locales made up five of the six cities listed in the ranking. Sperling cited low unemployment rates, low cost of living and numerous singles as the reasons these cities faired well.

Iowa City features , a 4.7 percent jobless rate and 16.1 percent singles population (percentage of unmarried people among 25-to-34 year olds), according to Sperling's.

The other cities listed are No. 5, Sioux Falls, SD; tied for No. 4, Lawton, OK, and Logan, UT; No. 3, Lincoln, NE; and No. 2, Fargo, ND.