During the pandemic, house prices have soared in cities and towns across the country. But what does this trend look like when you dig down to the zip code level for a detailed look at where the action is taking place? Realtor.com did just that in its annual report on the hottest zip codes in US real estate.
The website compared active listings with 30,000 postcodes from January 2021 to June 2021 using two metrics: demand, as measured by the number of unique people who clicked on property listings on Realtor.com; and time in the market or how long it took to sell houses. (Although there are nearly 42,000 postcodes in the country, those who don't have adequate sales data or representation on Realtor.com and those with too few offers to consider have been eliminated.)
In order to create a broad national image and to prevent the list from being dominated by a handful of high-performing markets, only one postcode was ranked per metropolitan area. "We looked for geographic diversity on the list so that it would be relevant to a wide audience," said Danielle Hale, the website's chief economist and author of the report.
In general, the list showed a strong desire by home buyers to move out of dense urban centers and move to cheaper suburbs nearby. In fact, the top 10 zip codes were within about 20 minutes of a major metropolitan area, many of which had strong millennial jobs.
Will these particular markets stay hot over time? Usually zip codes don't come back on the list year after year, Ms. Hale said. Any market can have a booming year, but a different zip code, sometimes close, may do better in the following year.
That year, she said, "The biggest surprise was a newcomer to the list: 37067, Franklin, Tennessee, just outside Nashville."
Nashville was a rising star on the year list, but this is the first time a ZIP has made it into the top 10 in the area. "It breaks the mold," said Ms. Hale. “What is common with the others is that they are relatively affordable areas, good places for beginners to get a foot in the door, or potentially good places for downsizers to get really good value for money achieve."
Zip code 37067, on the other hand, is an emerging luxury area with an average list price of $ 847,000. (Only three other zip codes in the top 10 had average list prices above $ 400,000.)
First up was 80916 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which had a relatively affordable average list price of $ 318,000. Homes there spent an average of four days in the market in June, and interest in offers on the site rose 36 percent year over year.
Below are the 15 hottest zip codes by Realtor.com and the metropolitan areas they belong to.
