This Is the City Where Housing Values Are Rising the Fastest

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 16, 8:35AM EDT

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This Is the City Where Housing Values Are Rising the Fastest — © DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. home sales slumped. Since then, however, the market has come roaring back. Rising demand, in conjunction with a relatively low supply of housing, has caused home values to surge.

According to estimates from Zillow, a Seattle-based real estate data company, between January 2020 and January 2021, the typical single-family American home appreciated in value from $246,563 to $269,039, a 9.1% increase. Of course, housing markets also respond to local forces, and in some parts of the country, home values have appreciated at more than double the national rate.

In 50 cities and towns with populations of 35,000 or more used to find the market where housing prices are rising the fastest, home values have appreciated by at least 16% over the past year. In some of them, the value of a typical family home has surged by more than 24%. Though these communities span the country, they tend to be concentrated in the western United States.

One factor that can contribute to rapidly climbing home prices at a local level is demand. A growing population often precipitates demand for housing. According to the most recent available census data, 33 of the 50 cities and towns on this list reported population growth over the past one-year period.
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Home prices also are largely dictated by what local residents can afford, and rising home values can often be the result of rising incomes. Of the 50 places on the list of finalists for the city where housing prices are rising the fastest, the only ones included are those for which income data is available. Of these, 48 reported year-over-year growth in median household income, based on the most recent available data census data.

Flint, Michigan, one of the poorest cities in America, tops the list, with a one-year change in median home value of 25.2%, which is $6,988. Some more on the Flint market:

> Median home value; January 2021: $34,715
> 1-yr. population change: –0.6% (–602)
> Population: 96,559
> 1-yr. change in median household income: +4.0% (+$1,117)
> Median household income: $28,834

Click here to see which cities have the fastest-rising housing prices.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.