The city of Manchester in New Hampshire is May’s hottest housing market, ranking first for the 10th time in the past year, Realtor.com reported.
Realtor.com’s monthly Hottness ranking looks at market demand, as measured by unique viewers per property on its website, and the pace of the market as measured by the number of days a listing remains active on Realtor.com.
The Northeast dominated the top 20 hottest markets, with multiple cities in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Wisconsin also made its way onto the list.
Manchester took the top spot for the first time in 2020 and has been number one 15 times since then.
The Northeast has had the least price hikes, which likely plays a role in its dominance here.
Affordability was the most important factor in the May lineup. Sixteen of the top 20 markets have homes available below the national median listing price.
The median national home price for active listings hit a record $447,000 in May, up 17.6% YOY.
However, the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL metro area made a historic jump to 105th place. While still far from a top contender, it saw the largest increase in its ranking YOY to its highest point for any May since 2016, when Realtor.com began collecting this data.
California has been all but exterminated from the rankings, without a single market on the list for the second month straight. This has never happened in the data’s history.
The California exodus has been a much-discussed topic in real estate this year. There is no evidence showing a statistically significant number of Californians fleeing the state. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Californians are only slightly more likely to leave the state when they move.
However, it is true that fewer people are moving to California.
“The public’s attention has been focused on the so-called ‘CalExodus’ phenomenon, but the reality is that the dramatic drop in ‘CalEntrances’ since the pandemic began has been a bigger driver of recent population changes in the state,” Natalie Holmes, research fellow at the California Policy Lab, said in a statement.