Dive Brief:
- Real estate research firm Realtor.com reported that its January traffic, searches and listing views indicate a strong spring for home sales, and said it has identified the top 20 most popular markets last month.
- San Francisco claimed the top spot as Realtor.com’s hottest market, and California commanded the list with seven of the top 10. Texas and Florida also made a strong showing with multiple positions, and Nashville, TN, climbed the highest on the list — up six spots to number seven.
- Realtor.com Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke said he expects January listing inventory to trend down 7% from December, which is the normal winter pattern. Homes are taking 6% longer to sell in January compared with December, but they are selling 4% faster than in January 2015.
Dive Insight:
The Realtor.com median listing price was $227,000 for January, up 8% from January 2015 but effectively unchanged from December.
The site also found that houses in the hottest markets move 30 to 50 days more quickly than the rest of the U.S. and their total days-on-market combined average has dropped 7% from last year.
The Top 20 includes:
- San Francisco, CA
- San Jose, CA
- Dallas, TX
- Vallejo, CA
- San Diego, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Nashville, TN
- Stockton, CA
- Denver, CO
- Los Angeles, CA
- Santa Rosa, CA
- Oxnard, CA
- Palm Bay, FL
- Yuba City, CA
- Modesto, CA
- Detroit, MI
- Midland, TX
- Santa Cruz, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Fort Wayne, IN
Bay area cities like San Francisco, San Jose and Vallejo are at the top of every hot or most-expensive list these days, but Midland, TX, is an unexpected entry.
The Associated Press reported last month that oil-reliant cities in Texas and North Dakota were experiencing dips in home sales, and, according to data from Realty Trac, Midland home sales fell 8% from October 2014 to October 2015. In nearby Odessa, TX, home sales were down 10.6% for the same period.
This most recent list significantly differs from Realtor.com’s predictions for the hottest 10 markets of 2016, which the site released in early December.
Realtor.com said that Denver, Dallas and San Francisco would experience a slowdown in price appreciation and declining sales, but all three are in the Top 10 of this latest list.