- Property values fell by about 2% in January as mortgage rates remained high.
- Buyers appear to be waiting for affordability to improve.
- Here are 31 cities that are getting the most attention from buyers so far in 2025.
The US housing market is still in hibernation mode as aspiring homebuyers continue to hold out for lower mortgage rates and property prices, though some markets are as popular as ever.
A seasonally quieter stretch in the real-estate market is off to a sleepy start. Home prices slid 2.2% in January from the year before, Realtor.com researchers noted late last month, in part because the 30-year fixed mortgage rate had topped 7% for the first time in over seven months. Borrowing costs are now at 6.9%, still higher than the 6.6% rate in early 2024.
Slightly cheaper property prices may help some buyers get their feet in the doors of new houses. But if mortgage rates remain this restrictive, many more may still be sidelined. That would mean falling home values are both a letdown for owners and not enough to help would-be owners.
“Buyers are really facing a double-whammy on affordability at this point,” said Hannah Jones, a senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com, in a recent interview. On the national level, she said succinctly that “the typical buyer cannot afford the typical home.”
Surging home inventory is also weighing on prices. Housing construction has boomed, which contributes to the 24.6% annual jump in active listings that Realtor.com observed in January. Having more options makes buyers choosier, as they don’t have to buy the first home they see.
However, there are signs that this frosty market is thawing — at least in certain regions.
31 highly popular cities among buyers
Although higher mortgage rates are a headache, buyers have still flocked to a few dozen cities so far this year.
Realtor.com just published its updated list of the hottest US housing markets, which is based on how long home listings stay on the market and how in-demand they are, as measured by traffic on its website. The more unique property views, the higher a city’s ranking is.
Home listings in the 20 most in-demand markets received about 2.6 times the demand of typical US homes last month, and sold three weeks earlier than the US median property. That strong demand drove prices up 1.5% from the year before in January.
What’s fascinating is that all 20 of those hot cities were in either the Northeast or Midwest, which differs from Business Insider’s research showing that eight of the 10 most-popular cities of 2024 were in the Southeast. However, Jones remarked that Northeast and Midwest markets have stood out since mid-2022, which is when mortgage rates first spiked.
“The Midwest, and some of these Northeast markets, are just outright affordable, relative to the rest of the US,” Jones said. “Relative to local incomes, they’re also relatively affordable. These are areas that just would appeal to anyone locally or elsewhere because homes are relatively low-priced.”
While some of these hot markets are much more expensive than the US median price of $400,500, Jones noted that they’re still a good deal compared to nearby cities. For example, the hottest location in January was Manchester, New Hampshire, which has a median home value of $578,975 that’s far cheaper than nearby Boston’s typical price tag of $799,450.
Buyers looking to leave major cities often look to nearby markets. When that happens in droves, it drives that town’s relatively low prices far higher — creating a paradox of sorts.
“In these more affordable markets, inventory is still really low relative to pre-pandemic,” Jones said. “Which means that a lot of buyer demand is coming into relatively few homes.”
Notably absent from Realtor.com’s list of hottest markets is the Sun Belt region, which boomed early in the pandemic but has since seen prices come back to earth as supply started to surge.
“They got so hot and so popular that prices were able to rise to a point that buyers would no longer participate once mortgage rates came up,” Jones said of properties in Sun Belt cities. “Prices are still really high in a lot of those markets, but inventory levels are high.”
Home supply in those 20 hot markets rose 12.7% to start the year, and while that’s a substantial jump, it’s nearly half the rate of the national median. Also, there are about half as many home listings in these popular cities as there were before the pandemic.
Business Insider examined Realtor.com’s data further and found that the 31 most popular cities in January were all either in the Northeast or Midwest, and 22 are cheaper than the US median.
Below are those markets, along with the multiple of property viewership versus the US median, the median days on the market in early 2024 and 2025, and the median listing price as well as how it compares to the US median price of $400,500.
