Photo by Monica Bourgeau on Unsplash
Despite the many challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has been a banner year for US home sales. Record-low mortgage rates, coupled with lifestyle factors like the proliferation of remote work and the desire for more living space, have pushed buyers off the sidelines, resulting in fierce competition for new and existing homes.
A new report from WalletHub pinpointing the best markets for buying a home lists three Texas cities among its top 10. The personal finance website compared 300 small, midsize and large cities from across the country and scored them on 24 metrics of “housing-market attractiveness and economic strength.”
Frisco, Texas, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, ranked third nationwide with a score of 67.73 out of 100. It also nabbed the number one spot for ‘affordability and economic environment.’ According to Realtor.com, the median list price of a home in Frisco is $459,500. Impressively, the city boasts the second-lowest foreclosure rate among all of the housing markets surveyed.
Texas’ state capital, Austin, came in at number seven with a score of 65.74. It was the fourth-best real estate market overall, losing out to Seattle, WA, Boise, ID, and Nashville, TN. Demand for real estate has surged in the nation’s fastest-growing city, causing home sales to spike 21.4 percent year-over-year in July. In 2019, Austin experienced unprecedented job growth led by the tech industry.
Denton, Texas, which also falls within the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, earned ninth place with a score of 65.09. Last year, Apartment Therapy listed this picturesque college town among the coolest suburbs in America, praising it for its historic main street and reasonable cost of living. Denton County is slated for substantial growth with several new construction single-family home communities in the works.
Other Texas markets that neared the top of WalletHub’s homebuying list were Allen (#14), McKinney (#16), Fort Worth (#35) and Carrollton (#39).
