Weekly Real Estate News
Summary
Realtor.com and WSJ ranked Appleton Wisconsin first among 200 metros, followed by South Bend and Canton. Nineteen top-20 metros are in the Midwest and Northeast. Weighted index uses 60% housing conditions and 40% economic/livability metrics; not a forecast or sales-volume ranking.
Appleton, Wisconsin, took the top position in a new national housing-market ranking Thursday, with smaller Midwest and Northeast metropolitan areas accounting for nearly the entire top 20.
The fall 2026 ranking from Realtor.com and The Wall Street Journal puts South Bend, Indiana, second and Canton, Ohio, third. Manchester, New Hampshire, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, round out the first five. Lynchburg, Virginia, is the only top-20 market outside the Midwest and Northeast.
The result offers a measure of where housing affordability, local economic conditions and buyer attention still coincide despite elevated borrowing costs. It is important to understand what the list measures: the ranking combines 12 indicators, with housing-market conditions receiving 60% of the weight and economic health and livability the other 40%. It does not establish that Appleton has the country’s strongest price appreciation or highest home-sales volume.
Appleton’s September median listing price was $404,950, up 1.3% from a year earlier and below the national $419,250 median reported in the study. Active listings more than doubled to 695. Properties spent a median 40 days on the market, compared with roughly 61 nationally.
Its unemployment rate was 2.8%, against a 4.2% average for the ranked metros, and its estimated cost of living was about 8% below the national average. The metro, with roughly 250,000 residents, was the smallest among the top 20.
Payments remain the central constraint
In 15 of the 20 leading markets, the ranking’s estimated monthly principal-and-interest payment was below the national benchmark of $2,863 using September prices and a 7.40% mortgage rate. The estimates were $1,820 in Canton, $1,834 in Rockford, Illinois, and $2,202 in South Bend.
Those estimates describe financing costs under the report’s assumptions, not the full expense of ownership. Property taxes, insurance, maintenance and local financing terms can change the affordability calculation for an individual household.
The national market has since seen a modest rate retreat. Freddie Mac’s October 29 survey placed the average 30-year fixed mortgage at 7.24%, down from 7.40% two weeks earlier. That newer rate should not be substituted into the ranking’s September payment estimates without recalculating them.
Fourteen of the fall top-20 metros had also appeared in the summer top 20. Bridgeport, Connecticut, advanced 33 places to 15th; Portland, Maine, rose 32 places to 14th. Youngstown, Ohio, dropped 40 places to 56th.
For agents and lenders, the index is a useful guide to where demand and relative value are intersecting. Its 200-metro universe and weighted methodology also limit its use as a prediction of future prices. The National Association of Realtors’ third-quarter price report offers a separate view of actual metro-level price movements.
