Map Reveals Best Real Estate Markets Right Now

While mortgage rates dropped below 6 percent this month, prospective homebuyers are still not eager to bite in many markets. But even as the nation’s housing market remains uncertain right now, some areas are more promising for buyers than others.
In particular, areas in the South and Southeast continue to be at the top of the pack when it comes to ideal markets for a home purchase, according to a WalletHub report.
The top 10 real estate markets in the report are:
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This list is based on 17 key indicators of housing market attractiveness and economic strength, ranging from median home price appreciation to housing affordability and job growth.
“Current home prices are extremely important, but there’s much more that you need to look at when determining the health of a city’s real estate market,” WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe said in the report.
“Factors like the cost of living, the potential for the value of homes to increase, the availability of recently built homes and the quality of the city’s job market are all important to consider in conjunction with asking prices and interest rates,” she continued. “The best cities may not always be the cheapest, but they offer excellent housing options and long-term stability.”
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McKinney, Texas, took the top spot for several reasons. It has one of the highest shares of houses built between 2010 and 2021, at 35 percent, so new buyers likely wouldn’t have to pay major maintenance costs on their homes. It was also the 76th cheapest of the 300 cities in the study.
Meanwhile, Frisco, Texas, had the highest share of houses built between 2010 and 2021, 42 percent, and had the 15th best job growth rate in the country.
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Texas has also made headway for its real estate markets because of significant population growth and the influx of new businesses, said Kevin Thompson, a finance expert and the founder and CEO of 9i Capital Group.
“Toyota moved to Plano in 2017, and other major companies like McKesson and AT&T have also established a presence in the area,” Thompson told Newsweek. “The combination of low taxes and light regulation has made Texas an attractive environment for business, which in turn drives housing growth in these regions.”
In North Carolina, Durham and Cary were solid housing markets because of the low costs of living and low mortgage-delinquency rates.
Migration to the South and Southeast is still steady, affecting housing markets for both buyers and sellers. On the buyers’ side, prices can be significantly lower than what they could buy in the area where they previously lived.
“While the pandemic-era migration to other states has settled some in recent months, most markets that boomed during the time period are still seeing a surge in home sales,” Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek.
“Markets in Arizona, Tennessee, Texas and North Carolina are still seeing people moving in from more expensive cities, and even if home values in those markets are still at or near all-time highs, the reality is prices in those locations are still vastly cheaper than where they’re moving from,” Beene said.
Homebuyers across the country might be afraid to make the leap because of higher interest rates, but some real estate experts are recommending buying now and refinancing later.
“For those who are first-time homebuyers, now is a good time to buy,” Rosalind Greenstein, a lecturer in urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, said in the report. “In some of the strongest markets inventories are at historic lows but waiting for interest rates to fall and for inventory to increase [and] also waiting for more buyers — who can bid up prices — to enter the market.”
Despite many homebuyers’ complaints about the current housing market, it’s unlikely to change dramatically in the next year, according to Brent Smith, a Kornblau scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University.
“Will it crash or boom? Given sufficient time the answer is yes and yes,” Smith said in the report. “Will there be a collapse or price boom in 2024? So long as there are no dramatic events such as war, recession, pandemic, etc., it is unlikely there will be any dramatic swings in the housing market over the next year.”