There may be some relief for home shoppers on the horizon after a frustrating few years of rising mortgage rates and sky-high housing prices. Realtor.com predicts 2024 will kick off a slow retreat in the cost for home loans and an uptick in housing affordability.
It's against this backdrop that the home-listings and real-estate-data site has ranked its picks for the hottest housing markets of 2024. These are cities among the country's 100 largest metros where Realtor.com expects the number of homes that trade hands and their prices to grow the most, with a ranking based on the highest anticipated growth combined.
"Now that we're seeing the beginning of an affordability turnaround, home buyers are still looking for markets where they can capitalize on lower prices," Danielle Hale, Realtor.com's chief economist, said. "Even in some of the more expensive markets, we'll see double-digit sales growth as sales start to rebound from their historic lows, helped by mortgage rates which are expected to finally relent."
The top 10 ranking metros comprise affordable markets in the Northeast and Midwest, like Toledo, Ohio, and Rochester, New York, alongside Southern California markets, like the Los Angeles and San Diego areas, that are expected to rebound from 2023's sluggish sales.
Realtor.com looked at changes in existing home sales and existing home median sale prices which, the report notes, impacted Southern metros in the ranking. Southern metros had a higher percentage of newly built homes on the market to date in 2023 than other areas.
Below are the forecasted 17 hottest housing markets next year. Forecasted changes below are about existing homes. The forecasted home sales and price changes are year-over-year values.