According to a new ranking by listings portal Zillow, New Hampshire has the nation’s most-trafficked local housing market of 2024.
The company’s economists created an index combining measures of consumer demand, like web traffic on Zillow listings in different markets, how fast homes in each market sold and how fast those homes sold.
The results were surprising for a state whose housing market has been somewhat slow since the pandemic homebuying boom. Year-to-date through Nov. 3 – the most recent data available from The Warren Group, publisher of The Registry Review – New Hampshire has seen the fewest number of closed home sales since 2011, when the state was emerging from the Great Recession: 8,548 at a median sale price of $487,000, up 10.60 percent over the same point in time in 2023.
Zillow’s ranking put Manchester as the nation’s most popular market, in part because of buyer interest from out-of-town, “suggesting a strong interest in relocating there,” Zillow economists wrote. The report didn’t specify where the out-of-area interest hailed from, but if past is prologue many are likely refugees from the expensive Greater Boston market.
Other communities that made the list were often centers of gravity on the exurban fringe of big metro areas – Rockford, Illinois, Columbia, Maryland and Stamford, Connecticut – or regional centers in their own right like New Haven, Connecticut, Allentown, Pennsylvania and Peoria, Illinois. Silicon Valley community Sunnyvale was the only classic suburb to make the list.
The company’s economists put the growth down to the lure of affordability, and the ongoing viability of remote work for many white-collar jobs helping goose demand in some areas.
“In another year of higher mortgage rates, areas of affordability and opportunity were center stage in 2024,” Zillow Chief Economist Skylar Olsen said in a statement. “With the rise of hybrid work models, more people are discovering hidden-gem cities they might have previously overlooked when daily commutes were the norm. Buyers are seeking out locations that offer the right mix of affordable living and lifestyle amenities. Adding to the price pressure, new listings can remain sparse in the hottest spots as existing owners continue to hold on and hold back.”
