This Is the Most Popular House in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 20, 11:30AM EST

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This Is the Most Popular House in America — © DeborahMaxemow / E+ via Getty Images

Home sales this year will top 6.5 million in America. That is much higher than any year since 2005.

There has been a home-buying frenzy in 2021. Tens of thousands of people have left the expensive coastal cities with median home prices that can be more than twice the national average to cities inland with lower home prices, lower costs of living and perceived better quality of life.

Much of the movement has been helped by the COVID-19 pandemic “work from home” environment. Increasingly, people can simply live where they want to. Ironically, the rush to places like Boise (where many west coast people go) has driven prices up by percentages well into the double digits.

Realtor.com has put together a list of the most popular homes of 2021, based on how many people viewed an individual home on the Realtor.com website.
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The researchers found that the way a house was described is critical to page views, apparently more than location or prices. The authors commented, “It worked! The Tampa, FL, residence marketed as the ‘worst house on the block’ became the most popular home on Realtor.com in 2021.”

The most popular home of the year was 37913 Avoca Avenue, Zephyrhills, Florida. It was listed in February for $69,000 and sold in April for $51,500. It went back on the market in July for $225,000 and sold for that price in October. The house was a “tear down,” and the owners who bought the house in February treated it as such. What was described as a “shack” is now a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home on a 0.45 acre. Everything in the house is new, from the HVAC to the roof.

Zephyrhills is a suburb northeast of Tampa. According to the Census Bureau, it had a population of 6,456, which is a surge of 18.7% from 2020. Over 73% of the population is white, while another 18% is Hispanic/Latino. Zephyrhills is extremely poor. Its median income of $36,260 is just above half the national number. The poverty rate of 18.2% is much higher.

Click here to see the most affordable places to buy a house in the South.
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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.