1. Whiterun
Just up my alley. My favorite house in the game. Quaint and cozy.

-Needs a basemant or other area where more stuff could be .. Storage, enchantment and smithy.

2. Windhelm
Nice house with storage .. Could use more storage.. Comes with quest that is sometimes very buggy.. Must jump through lots of hoops and wait a long time to get this house. Can not speak to Ulfric without initiating the Stormcloak quest. Can not speak to him normally.

3. Markarth
Second favorite house. Really nice. Needs more storage.

4. Solitude
Beautiful big house with almost no storage. Storage in the basemant is static and unusable.

Needs -Basemant storage area redone.

5. Riften:
Beautiful little house. Useless area in basemant. Needs more storage. Beautiful view out back.

I'm using Ainis'e hut as a starter home, as long as you don't mind killing the owner. She desrves it, as you find in the basemant, but I like to drop her before she twigs I know about her. The pouch and sack downstairs appear to be safe, but I think the drawers upstairs respawn. No smithing stuff, but Riverwood is fairly close.

I bought reezehome first. By the gimme I could afford Proudspire Manor, I had all my goodies well arranged all around the house. I've moved some things to other houses but on the whole Breeze home has made organizing much simpler for Mr.

There are some seriously NICE mods for Breezehome and Honeyside on skyrimnexus.... adds all that stuff, and more....

The more I think about it, I'd say some of the homes you get through marriage are cool too. You don't get much to interact with, but some are in cool settings. Camila's house in Riverwood, for example. I might marry "Gilfre" on one of my characters. She isn't the prettiest character, but neither is mine. I like the location though.

my favorite Hjerim but all the houses are really cool.

Breezehome is really nice because of the blacksmith next door and Whiterun is a nice little city. I like Proudspire Manor though; it's nice and large and has a fair amount of storage outside of the basemant and the layour is rather nice and spacious. Yet to experience a bug with it though, and it can be buggy for some. I generally keep my wife and live in Proudspire Manor, use Breezehome as a base of operations and storage facility due to the next-door blacksmith, and Riften as a cottage when I just want to get away from it all.