Realtor.com has revealed its Top Housing Markets for 2025, highlighting the areas ready for growth in the year ahead. This year’s list highlights markets characterized by moderately affordable homes, strong inventory–mainly boosted by new construction–and a sizable base of younger families, many with military and international connections.
According to Realtor.com, the top 10 markets for 2025 are concentrated in the South and West:
1) Colorado Springs, Colorado
2) Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Florida
3) Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Virginia-North Carolina
4) El Paso, Texas
5) Richmond, Virginia
6) Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Florida
7) McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas
8) Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, Arizona
9) Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, Georgia
10) Greensboro-High Point, North Carolina
“While nationwide home sales are expected to see a slight uptick this year, driven by a cooling in home price growth, the top markets we’ve identified are poised for stronger sales and price gains in 2025,” said Danielle Hale, Chief Economist at Realtor.com. “With mortgage rates likely to ease only modestly next year, these markets—offering relatively lower-priced homes, more new and existing houses to choose from, and mortgage products designed to give buyers a leg up—could provide some would-be buyers a better chance at entering the market next year.”
Sun Belt Boom
Realtor.com’s top 10 are all located in the South and West, with multiple markets from three states–Texas, Florida, and Virginia. While these areas generally offer lower home prices than the national average, incomes tend to be lower as well. As a result, housing affordability remains a challenge, with buyers spending about 31.1% of their income on housing—higher than the national average of 29.2%. However, seven of the top 10 markets offer a more affordable cost of living compared to the U.S. average, with McAllen, Texas leading as the most affordable, with living costs 13% below the national average. Miami stands out as the least affordable, with housing costs consuming 42.1% of income and a cost of living 11.5% above the U.S. average.
Remote Working Situations Come Into Play
Along with slightly lower overall living costs, buyers in many of these markets may also benefit from flexible work arrangements; Realtor.com research found many shoppers use flexible work options to navigate affordability challenges–a trend expected to continue. Half of the top markets, including Richmond, Virginia (11.8%); Atlanta (10.8%); Phoenix (10.6%); Colorado Springs, Colorado (8.9%); and Orlando, Florida (8.8%), report higher shares of remote or hybrid job postings in 2024 than the average across the top 100 metros (8.6%), according to WFH Data.
Inventory on the Rise
While the nation’s housing inventory remains a challenge, a recovery is underway, with the number of homes for sale in November notching the highest mark since December 2019. Despite those gains, the market still trails the November 2017-2019 average by 20%, with notable regional variation: the South and West are far closer to pre-pandemic levels than the Midwest and Northeast. Among the top 10 metros, eight have seen year-over-year growth in single-family home construction, with builders increasingly focusing on more affordable and smaller homes to meet demand. But new home construction is only part of the story–despite increased construction, new home listings have declined as a share of the market in eight of the top 10 markets as more existing homeowners return to selling and add to the uptick in homes for sale.
In November, all four U.S. regions continued to see active inventory grow over the previous year. The South saw listings grow by 30.8%, while inventory grew by 29.2% in the West, 18.9% in the Midwest, and 9.7% in the Northeast. Compared with the typical November from 2017 to 2019 before COVID-19, the South saw the smallest gap in inventory, down just 1.4% compared with pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the gap was 4.5% in the West, and much larger in the Midwest and Northeast, at 36.3% and 47.3%, respectively.
The inventory of homes for sale increased in all 50 of the largest metros compared with last year. Metros that saw the most inventory growth included San Diego (+52.5%), Miami (+50.9%), and Denver (+50.7%).
Top Markets Feature Diversity
Realtor.com found that the top 10 markets for 2025 are distinguished by their dynamic and diverse communities. Younger households are notably more common, with all but Miami having an above-average share of residents undern the age of 35. These markets also have higher rates of families with children, with 28.8% of households including children compared to the national average of 26.5%.
Military connections were another defining characteristic—more than one in seven households in the top markets are active-duty or veterans, exceeding the average of one in eight across the 100 largest metros. Additionally, these communities have strong international ties, with 17.6% of residents being foreign-born, compared to an average of 13% in the largest metros. Miami leads with 42.7% foreign-born residents, and is joined by other Florida and Texas markets, which also have shares above 20%.
Government Mortgages Gaining in Popularity
And given that many of these younger households feature strong military connections, it’s no surprise that government-backed lending options like VA, FHA, and USDA mortgages play a key role and are more prevalent among buyers in top markets, helping more households achieve homeownership with lower down payments and fueling the expected sales and price growth in 2025. More than half of recent mortgages were government loans in Colorado Springs, Colorado; El Paso, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Virginia because of high VA-loan usage. Nearly three in four mortgage loans were government loans in El Paso, with 29.3% comprised of VA loans and 41% were FHA loans. Combined with moderate price points in the top markets, these programs are helping make homeownership accessible to more families.
Click here for more on Realtor.com’s Top Housing Markets for 2025.
