Billings, Mont., is the new No. 1 on The Wall Street Journal and Realtor.com's WSJ/Realtor.com Summer 2021 Emerging Housing Markets Index.
Billings and the No. 2 market, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, were among the seven repeat markets from last year's top 20. In addition, three markets in the top 20 jumped roughly 100 spots from last quarter, with Huntsville, AL, jumping 214 spots this quarter.
After Billings and Coeur d'Alene, the top 20 emerging markets included: Fort Wayne, Ind., Rapid City, S.D., Raleigh, N.C., Portland-South Portland, Maine, Waco, Texas, Johnson City, Tenn., Bangor, Maine, Huntsville, Ala., Topeka, Kan., Jefferson City, Mo., Elkhart-Goshen, Ind., Colorado Springs, Colo., Eureka-Arcata-Fortuna, Calif., Springfield, Ohio, Manchester-Nashua, N.H., Concord, N.H., Burlington, N.C. and Elizabethtown-Fort Knox, Ky.
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The top 20 list was dominated by smaller markets, with an average population size just over 300,000. Raleigh, NC, with a population of 1.4 million, is the largest market. Yet, its population is slightly smaller than last quarter's largest market that made the top 20, Austin, TX (2.2 million).
The median listing price in the top 20 is $349,900, which is less than the median of $361,900 in the top 300 largest U.S. markets. The top 20 markets are growing at a 13.7% year-over-year clip compared to an 8.0% average among all 300 areas evaluated.
Unemployment improvements were a prominent feature across the top 300 markets, with unemployment dropping from 6.3% on average in the first quarter to 5.5% in the second quarter. In addition, some of the top markets saw even more significant improvements.
Nine of the 13 markets that fell out of the top 20 are still within the top 50. Eleven of the 13 are within the top 60, and 12 of 13 are within the top 100.
The WSJ/Realtor.com Emerging Housing Markets Index looks at key housing market data, economic vitality and lifestyle metrics to identify emerging housing markets that offer a high quality of life and are expected to see future home price appreciation. The index's methodology was recently updated to include real estate tax data. Areas with lower effective real estate taxes are ranked higher, which boosted the ranking of areas in the South and West.
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Leslie Shaver
Les Shaver has been covering commercial and residential real estate for almost 20 years. His work has appeared in Multifamily Executive, Builder, units, Arlington Magazine in addition to GlobeSt.com and Real Estate Forum.
