This Is the Hottest Real Estate Market in America

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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This Is the Hottest Real Estate Market in America

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Home sales across much of the United States are on fire. Prices have recently risen at rates that top even the wild market of 2005 and 2006, just before the balloon burst and helped trigger the Great Recession. Currently, the hottest real estate market in the U.S. is Manchester, New Hampshire.

Some of the recent demand in hot markets has been driven by people who have moved out of big cities because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people expect to work from home permanently and would like to live in cities and towns with lifestyle advantages. Mortgage rates remain near multi-decade lows, and the incomes of many middle-class and upper-class Americans were not dented by last year’s economic downturn.

Realtor.com looked at home sales across cities for the month of April. The website’s economists picked the hottest markets. The proprietary ranking is based on how quickly homes sell and which metro’s listings have the most viewings on the website.

Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale pointed out that five of the top 10 markets are in the Midwest. This is, in part, because the selling season tends to be in the spring and summer in these markets and demand peaks during those months. However, the top two markets in April this year — Concord and Manchester — are both in New Hampshire.

Some of these markets are not affluent. Rochester, New York, one of the old industrial cities that have posted a drop in population for years, ranks 10th. Yuba City, California, near Stockton, ranks 13th on the list. It has a low median household income compared to the national figure, as well as a poverty rate much higher than the U.S. rate.

These are the 20 hottest housing markets in America and their median listing prices.

To determine the hottest real estate markets in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data from real estate information site Realtor.com, a subsidiary of News Corp. Real estate markets were ranked based on “how quickly homes sell and which metros’ listings are viewed the most,” as of April 2021, according to Realtor.com. Supplemental place-level data on population and median household income came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey and are five-year estimates.

Ed-Ni-Photo / Getty Images

20. Santa Cruz, CA
> 1-yr. rank change: +6 places
> Median listing price: $1,190,000
> Median household income: $77,921
> 5-yr. population change: +4.0%

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DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images

19. Stockton, CA
> 1-yr. rank change: -2 places
> Median listing price: $499,000
> Median household income: $54,614
> 5-yr. population change: +4.0%

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oneillbro / Getty Images

18. Colorado Springs, CO
> 1-yr. rank change: -17 places
> Median listing price: $494,000
> Median household income: $64,712
> 5-yr. population change: +7.2%

Nytasi / made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) / Wikimedia Commons

17. Eureka, CA
> 1-yr. rank change: +97 places
> Median listing price: $469,000
> Median household income: $42,890
> 5-yr. population change: -0.3%

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16. Madison, WI
> 1-yr. rank change: +17 places
> Median listing price: $392,000
> Median household income: $65,332
> 5-yr. population change: +6.3%

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images

15. Springfield, MA
> 1-yr. rank change: +40 places
> Median listing price: $372,000
> Median household income: $39,432
> 5-yr. population change: +0.2%

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gnagel / Getty Images

14. Jefferson City, MO
> 1-yr. rank change: +83 places
> Median listing price: $213,000
> Median household income: $52,253
> 5-yr. population change: -0.6%

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13. Yuba City, CA
> 1-yr. rank change: -1 place
> Median listing price: $400,000
> Median household income: $56,816
> 5-yr. population change: +2.1%

SeanPavonePhoto / Getty Images

12. Worcester, MA
> 1-yr. rank change: +7 places
> Median listing price: $390,000
> Median household income: $48,139
> 5-yr. population change: +1.4%

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Cindy Funk / Wikimedia Commons

11. Springfield, OH
> 1-yr. rank change: +17 places
> Median listing price: $180,000
> Median household income: $39,332
> 5-yr. population change: -1.8%

Davel5957 / Getty Images

10. Rochester, NY
> 1-yr. rank change: +16 places
> Median listing price: $264,000
> Median household income: $35,590
> 5-yr. population change: -1.7%

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Sanfranman59 / Wikimedia Commons

9. Vallejo, CA
> 1-yr. rank change: -3 places
> Median listing price: $545,000
> Median household income: $69,405
> 5-yr. population change: +2.7%

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Sean Pavone / Getty Images

8. Portland, ME
> 1-yr. rank change: +58 places
> Median listing price: $462,000
> Median household income: $60,467
> 5-yr. population change: +0.4%

LawrenceSawyer / Getty Images

7. Topeka, KS
> 1-yr. rank change: Unchanged
> Median listing price: $157,000
> Median household income: $47,999
> 5-yr. population change: -1.0%

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6. Columbus, OH
> 1-yr. rank change: -1 place
> Median listing price: $315,000
> Median household income: $53,745
> 5-yr. population change: +8.2%

Publichall / Wikimedia Commons

5. Elkhart, IN
> 1-yr. rank change: +35 places
> Median listing price: $150,000
> Median household income: $40,750
> 5-yr. population change: +1.4%

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4. Janesville, WI
> 1-yr. rank change: +19 places
> Median listing price: $258,000
> Median household income: $56,293
> 5-yr. population change: +0.9%

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John Schanlaub / Wikimedia Commons

3. Lafayette, IN
> 1-yr. rank change: +1 place
> Median listing price: $303,000
> Median household income: $46,374
> 5-yr. population change: +3.7%

2. Concord, NH
> 1-yr. rank change: +22 places
> Median listing price: $379,000
> Median household income: $66,719
> 5-yr. population change: +1.7%

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DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images

1. Manchester, NH
> 1-yr. rank change: +2 places
> Median listing price: $400,000
> Median household income: $60,711
> 5-yr. population change: +1.9%

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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