By Ben Geier | SmartAsset
Selling a house can prove a challenging process if your property stays on the market longer than you’d like or sells at a loss. Having access to high-quality real estate professionals in your area can help improve your experience, but there are some cities where selling a house is just a bit easier than others.
To find the best cities to sell a house, SmartAsset analyzed data for 165 of the largest cities in the U.S. across the following five metrics: five-year change in median home value, average number of days on the market, percentage of homes sold for a loss, closing costs and real estate offices per 100,000 residents.
Key Findings
- Western cities are best for selling homes. Every city in the top 10 of this list is in the West, according to Census regional divisions. In fact, all but two of the top 10 cities in the study are in either Arizona or Colorado. Furthermore, the first non-Western city to enter the study is Richardson, Texas at No. 29.
- Less California love. In our 2019 study, four cities in the Golden State were in the top 10 – Hayward at No. 3, Moreno Valley tied for No. 5, Pomona at No. 9 and Elk Grove at No. 10. This year all of them fell out of the top 10 and dropped to 14th, 23rd, 17th and 33rd, respectively, still staying within the top fifth of the study.
- Wait time is more than double in the bottom 10. Across the top 10 cities in our study, the average amount of time a house stays on the market is 49 days. But across the bottom 10 cities – all in Northeastern, Midwestern and Southern states – you’ll have to wait more than twice that amount of time for your house to be sold, about 104 days.
