This Is the Hottest Real Estate Market in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 1, 10:30AM EDT

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This Is the Hottest Real Estate Market in America — © LOUOATES / Getty Images

The American real estate market has gone from catastrophe to wild success in just over a decade. The Great Recession triggered 3.7 million foreclosures. Many more owners lost most, if not all, of their home equity. Fast forward to 2021. Home prices have more than recovered to their previous peak of 2006. According to the carefully followed S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, home prices rose 19.8% in August, compared to the same month last year. In three markets (Phoenix, Tampa and San Diego), the number was over 25%.

Several factors triggered the rise in prices. One is that mortgage rates are near historic lows. Many 30-year fixed-rate mortgages have been issued at rates below 3%. Another factor is a migration of people from expensive coastal cities like New York and San Francisco to less expensive metros inland, which not only have lower housing prices but also a perceived better quality of life. The migration, in turn, has been helped by the millions of Americans who work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They no longer have to live close to what was once their offices.

Even with the price surge, some markets are “hotter” than others. Realtor.com recently issued a study of the hottest home markets in the United States based on September data. The methodology in detail:

The Realtor.com economics team came up with its ranking of the hottest U.S. markets for real estate by tracking the metropolitan areas where homes are selling the quickest and where the most potential buyers are clicking on property listings.

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Home prices in the hottest markets tend to be below the national average. Of the 20 hottest markets in the study, the median home price was $310,620, compared to the national median of $380,000.

The hottest housing market in September was Manchester, New Hampshire. It has taken the prize in 10 months since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The median home price in the metro was $416,250, in contrast to the closest city, Boston, where the comparable number was $675,000.

Finding a house in Manchester is likely about to become more difficult. Homes in the metro are selling in about three weeks after they are listed. That is 23 days faster than the national number. At that rate, the metro may completely run out of homes for sale.

Click here to see which are the cheapest cities in which to buy a home.
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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.