Lafayette, Indiana, held the top spot in the latest Wall Street Journal/Realtor.com Emerging Housing Markets Index.
The newly-released second quarter results were a triumph for Midwest markets that occupied the top 10 rankings, with Indiana occupying the top three berths – Lafayette, Fort Wayne and Elkhart-Goshen; 300 of the nation’s largest metro areas were analyzed for this report.
Rounding out the top 10 were Bloomington, Illinois; Sioux City, Iowa; Columbus, Ohio; Topeka, Kansas; Johnson City, Tennessee; South Bend, Indiana; and Kingsport, Tennessee.
Sixteen of the top 20 markets in the second quarter’s index had median home listing prices last month that were below the $445,000 national median, and the number of homes for sale were up on average by 16% from one year earlier. The top-ranked markets also had faster home sales than the national market.
“Buyers continue to zone in on affordable areas,” said economists at Realtor.com in their analysis. “While the market has slowed, it has not come to a full stop.”
