By Adam McCann | WalletHub
Whether you’re in the real estate business or just looking for a place to call home, it’s important to get a handle on the housing markets you’re considering before investing in a property.
If you aim to make a profit in the long run with your housing purchase, you’ll need to look beyond tangible factors like square footage and style. Those factors certainly drive up property values. From an investor’s standpoint, though, they hold less significance than historical market trends and the economic health of residents.
To determine the best local real estate markets in the U.S., WalletHub compared 300 cities of varying sizes across 17 key indicators of housing-market attractiveness and economic strength. Our data set ranges from median home-price appreciation to housing affordability to job growth.
“Current home prices are extremely important, but there’s much more that you need to look at when determining the health of a city’s real estate market. Factors like the cost of living, the potential for the value of homes to increase, the availability of recently-built homes and the quality of the city’s job market are all important to consider in conjunction with asking prices and interest rates. The best cities may not always be the cheapest, but they offer excellent housing options and long-term stability.”
-CASSANDRA HAPPE, WALLETHUB ANALYST
