7 major US cities where homes are both affordable and easy to find

There are several real-estate markets where there's a prevalence of affordable houses.Joe Raedle / Getty Images

• Home transaction activity is up since mortgage rates are down from their peak.
• However, some property owners and homebuyers still seem to be in a stalemate.

Home sales picked up steam this autumn, but many buyers still refuse to bite until prices fall.

The US housing market perked up after mortgage rates plunged from their mid-summer peak through mid-September, even though they've experienced a remarkable resurgence since then.

Pending home sales rose 7.4% in September, which was the largest leap since the spring, a late-October report from the National Association of Realtors found. That lines up with October data from Realtor.com, which indicates that property sales ticked up modestly last month.

"Contract signings rose across all regions of the country as buyers took advantage of the combination of lower mortgage rates in late summer and more inventory choices," said the NAR's economy chief Lawrence Yun in a statement for that report. "Further gains are expected if the economy continues to add jobs, inventory levels grow, and mortgage rates hold steady."

But despite what those substantial increases in home sales might show, some signals suggest that properties aren't selling like hotcakes.

Homeowners have had leverage over buyers for the most of the last two decades, due to the long-standing housing shortage in the US that seemed to push prices perpetually higher.

That might be starting to change, as Realtor.com found that there are more homes on the market now than at any point since the pandemic after new listings rose 4.9% year-over-year.

Active home listings rose by 29.2% and for a 12th straight month, according to Realtor.com. That has created the largest inventory stockpile since December 2019. On a related note, the number of unsold homes in the US has risen by an eye-catching 22.5% from last October.

The typical home has been on the market for nearly two months — or 58 days, to be precise — Realtor.com economist Ralph McLaughlin remarked in the report. That made for the quietest October in five years, he noted. For context, that figure is over a week longer than it was last October and is three days longer than in September.

Although sellers aren't having much success, they don't seem to be willing to do much about it.

Realtor.com found that 18.6% of US properties received price cuts last month, the same rate as last year. That explains why property prices haven't budged, with the median sale price in October little changed from 2023 at just under $425,000.

Even though homeowners have been reluctant to give buyers a discount, there are still places where aspiring proprietors can find fair deals.

Of the 50 largest US real-estate markets included in Realtor.com's monthly study, only seven are both at least 10% cheaper than the national median of $424,950 and have had active listings grow by 20% or more in the last year.

Below are those seven metropolitan areas listed alphabetically, along with their median listing price, year-over-year price growth, active and new listing growth, and the median number of days that houses have been on the market, both this year and in October 2023.