These Are the Easiest and Hardest Areas to Find a Home in the U.S.

Kelly Corbett
·2 min read
Photo credit: The Washington Post - Getty Images
Photo credit: The Washington Post - Getty Images

From House Beautiful

Looking to move to a new city? Well, you might want to take a look at this before starting your house hunt. Realtor.com recently released a list of the 20 hardest and 20 easiest markets in the United States to find a home in. To compile this info, they looked at the number of listings per 1,000 homeowner-occupied households in the largest 100 metro areas. Their analysis was based on the number of homes for sale relative to the local population, all using data from the fourth quarter of 2019.

They found that San Jose, CA is the toughest metro area to find a house in, while the easiest three metro areas are all in Florida: Fort Myers, Miami, and Deltona. The 20 toughest metro areas had a median listing price of $480,830, which is 40 percent higher than the average median price of the top 100 largest markets. Meanwhile, the easiest 20 metro areas had a median listing price of $356,345. Plus, the easiest metros were all said to have healthy markets that showed continual growth.

Can check out the lists below to see where your city ranks. You can also read the entire analysis here.

Toughest Markets to Find a Home

As mentioned, San Jose, CA is the toughest metro area to find a house in, with just 4 homes for sale per 1,000 homeowner households. San Francisco, Rochester and Buffalo, N.Y., and Seattle, which had an average of 5.2, 6.1, 7.1 and 7.2 for sale homes per 1,000 households. This compares to the national average of 16 listings per thousand owner-occupied homes.

  1. San Jose, CA

  2. San Francisco, CA

  3. Buffalo, NY

  4. Rochester, NY

  5. Seattle, WA

  6. Milwaukee, WI

  7. Columbus, OH

  8. Salt Lake City, UT

  9. Boston, MA

  10. Springfield, MA

  11. Harrisburg, PA

  12. San Diego, CA

  13. Washington D.C.

  14. Oxnard, CA

  15. Grand Rapids, MI

  16. Madison, WI

  17. Los Angeles, CA

  18. Sacramento, CA

  19. Cincinnati, OH

  20. Akron, OH

Easiest Markets to Find a Home In

The easiest metro area was Fort Myers, FL, producing around 38 listings for every 1,000 households. It was followed by Miami, FL and Deltona, FL and Bridgeport, CT which had 31.8, 30.9, and 29.7 listings, respectively.

  1. Fort Myers, FL

  2. Miami, FL

  3. Deltona, FL

  4. Bridgeport, CT

  5. North Port, FL

  6. Jackson, FL

  7. Charleston, SC

  8. Virginia Beach, NC

  9. Las Vegas, NV

  10. New York, NY

  11. Baton Rouge, LA

  12. Des Moines, IA

  13. Houston, TX

  14. San Antonio, TX

  15. Lakeland, FL

  16. Hartford, CT

  17. New Haven, CT

  18. Honolulu, HI

  19. Palm Bay, FL

  20. Greenville, SC

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