Best Real Estate Markets (2026)

Whether you’re in the real estate business or just looking for a place to call home, it’s important to get a handle on the housing markets you’re considering before investing in a property.

If you aim to make a profit in the long run with your housing purchase, you’ll need to look beyond tangible factors like square footage and style. Those factors certainly drive up property values. From an investor’s standpoint, though, they hold less significance than historical market trends and the economic health of residents.

To determine the best local real estate markets in the U.S., WalletHub compared 300 cities of varying sizes across 17 key indicators of housing-market attractiveness and economic strength. Our data set ranges from median home-price appreciation to housing affordability to job growth.

Main Findings

Best Real Estate Markets

Note: With the exception of “Total Score,” all of the columns in the table above depict the relative rank of that city, where a rank of 1 represents the best conditions for that metric category.

Ranking by City Size

In-Depth Look at the Best Real Estate Markets

Frisco, TX

Frisco, TX, has the best real estate market, with the highest share of houses that were built between 2010 and 2024, at nearly 47%. That’s good news for people who want all the benefits of a recently-constructed home, like not having to put in a lot of work immediately.

In addition, Frisco is an affordable place to live. When you look at home prices as a percentage of income, the city is the 95th-cheapest among the 300 cities in our study. But it’s the 11th-cheapest city for phone service and the 11th-cheapest for maintenance and energy.

Finally, Frisco has the seventh-best job growth rate in the country, which helps attract new residents to its growing housing market.

McKinney, TX

McKinney, TX, has the second-best real estate market in the U.S., in large part because of its recent growth. McKinney has the second-highest share of houses that were built between 2010 and 2024, at roughly 40%, which means that new buyers have a lot of options for houses that may not need major maintenance for a while. There are also plenty more new housing options coming, as McKinney has the 10th-highest number of building permits per capita.

While McKinney isn’t necessarily the cheapest city to move to, it’s also far from the most expensive. The median home price in McKinney is around 380% of the median income, which is the 73rd-cheapest out of the 300 cities in our study. In addition, it ranks among the 35 least expensive cities for maintenance and telephone, and energy costs.

To top things off, McKinney has a good job market to go along with its healthy real estate market. It has the sixth-highest job growth rate in the nation, at over 17% annually.

Murfreesboro, TN

Murfreesboro, TN, has the third-best real estate market, driven in part by robust residential development. The city has the fourth-highest share of housing units built between 2010 and 2024, along with the 26th-highest building-permit activity in the country.

It can be a bit pricey to buy a house to begin with, as Murfreesboro ranks 137th for housing affordability – but that’s still among the cheaper half of the 300 cities in our study. In addition, Murfreesboro's housing market is also relatively balanced, with homes spending an average amount of time on the market.

Murfreesboro residents also seem to be able to keep up with their housing costs well. The city has the 46th-lowest mortgage delinquency rate and the 11th-lowest foreclosure rate. The fact that Murfreesboro has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and one of the best job growth rates also helps residents make their payments on time.

The methodology can be found on the full version of the article on WalletHub.