Act Fast or Miss Out: The Top 10 Housing Markets Where Homes Are Selling the Fastest

Act Fast or Miss Out: The Top 10 Housing Markets Where Homes Are Selling the Fastest

April 23, 2024
Boston MA, Columbus OH, data journalism, days on market, housing market, Manchester NH, Milwaukee WI, Rochester NY, San Francisco CA, San Jose CA, Seattle WA, Springfield MA, Trends, Worcester MA
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Clare Trapasso

The spring housing market may be off to a rocky start, but that doesn’t mean buyers can take it easy if they hope to succeed in purchasing a home.

While homes nationwide spent a median of 50 days on the market in March, they’re selling in less than half of that time in certain places, according to the most recent Realtor.com® data for median days on the market in the 200 largest metropolitan areas.

These fast-moving markets are spread out across the country, excluding the South. Some of these places are affordable, such as Rochester, NY, which tied for No. 2 on our list and on our most recent hottest markets ranking, where buyers can score a home for a median of $279,900 in March. Others are among the most expensive in the country, such as Silicon Valley’s San Jose, CA, which also tied for the No. 2 spot, where the median home costs $1.48 million.

These places tend to have lower unemployment rates, says Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale. Several have strong tech industries as well.

“Many of them are fairly expensive markets,” says Hale. “When prices are high, it’s expensive to just let [properties] sit when you’re trying to sell.”

Four of these brisk real estate markets are in the Boston area. These metropolitan areas include Manchester, NH, the No. 1 metro on our list, which was named America’s hottest housing market 22 times over the past three years. The other Boston-area markets are Worcester, MA, at No. 4; Boston, at No. 5; and Springfield, MA, at No. 7.

“You’ve [also] got markets that are close to popular, large markets,” says Hale.

Manchester, about an hour northwest of Boston, “is a very competitive market,” says local real estate broker Pamela Young, of eXp Realty. “An agent will delay showings until the open house. People go to the open house, and there’s 70 people there. Typically, an offer will come in from the open house.”

About 70.1% of those looking for homes in the Manchester area are from other states, according to Realtor.com data. Roughly 20% were from Boston and its suburbs, while 10.6% were from Manhattan.

That’s because buying a home in the Manchester metro area, with a median list price of $549,000, is about 37% cheaper than in the Boston area, where the median home price was $879,950 in March.

Young has seen homes sell within four days of being listed. These properties are typically in good condition and priced below what they’re worth to create competitive bidding.

As the stock market has soared, more people have jumped into the San Francisco Bay Area housing market, competing for a very limited number of homes for sale, says Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst for the Bay Area for Compass.

The Bay Area includes the priciest markets on our list, San Jose and San Francisco, which tied for sixth place.

“It’s the hottest the market has been since the pre-pandemic housing boom. It’s the home of Nvidia, Google, Apple,” says Carlisle. “When people feel a lot wealthier, they feel better about buying a new home.”

So where do buyers need to pick up the pace? Here are the top 10 metros where homes are selling the fastest, plus how long it takes.