![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/house-for-sale.jpg\")
article <\/p>\n article <\/p>\n
FILE-A for sale sign is displayed outside of a home for sale in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON\/AFP via Getty Images) <\/p>\n
Purchasing a home is a long-term investment requiring a lot of time and research when it comes to finding low interest rates and affordable down payments when searching for a place to settle down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While there\u2019s plenty for consumers to consider when searching for a house, WalletHub<\/a> released new data for the best real estate markets in the nation, comparing 300 cities across 17 categories.<\/p>\n RELATED: <\/strong>Expert confident about 2025 real estate market: What buyers may be missing<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a list of the best real estate markets in the U.S.<\/p>\n Best real estate markets <\/p>\n Why you should care:<\/p>\n WalletHub the cities across two key areas: real estate market and affordability and economic environment. Researchers examined those tiers using 17 data points which each one graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the healthiest housing market.\u00a0<\/p>\n What does the report say about the top three real estate markets?\u00a0 <\/p>\n Dig deeper:<\/p>\n Based on their data, WalletHub ranked McKinney, Texas, Cary, North Carolina, and Irvine, California as the best real estate markets in 2025.<\/p>\n McKinney, TX <\/p>\n McKinney, Texas<\/a>, was the number on the list for a few reasons. The city has the second-highest share of homes that were built between 2010 and 2023, at roughly 38%, meaning that consumers have more options for homes that may not need major maintenance for a while.\u00a0<\/p>\n RELATED: <\/strong>Real estate vs. stock market: Where Americans prefer to invest<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n According to WalletHub, the median home price in McKinney is roughly 365% of the median income, which is the 74th-cheapest out of the 300 cities. Meanwhile, McKinney has the 11th-highest job growth rate and ranks among the 40 least expensive cities for maintenance, telephone, and energy costs.<\/p>\n Cary, NC <\/p>\n Cary, North Carolina<\/a>, has the second-best real estate market, primarily because of its low cost of living with the fourth-lowest home energy costs in the U.S. and the fifth-lowest phone service costs and home maintenance costs.<\/p>\n Although the city ranks 96th for housing affordability, WalletHub noted that it has the 29th-lowest mortgage delinquency rate and the second-lowest foreclosure rate. And the area also has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation and one of the best job growth rates.<\/p>\n Irvine, CA <\/p>\n WalletHub ranked\u00a0Irvine, California,<\/a> as the third-best real estate market, in part because the city has the third-highest share of homes that were built between 2010 and 2023, at nearly 32%. Moreover, Irvine is the 11th-cheapest city for phone services and the 20th-cheapest for maintenance and energy and has the 15th-lowest mortgage delinquency rate. And if you\u2019re looking for work or a career change, Irvine has one of the best job growth rates in the U.S.<\/p>\n The Source:<\/b> Information for this story was provided by WalletHub, which released a report on the real estate markets comparing 300 cities across two key areas: real estate market and affordability and economic environment. The cities were graded on a 100-point scale, with a perfect score representing the healthiest housing market. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Real Estate<\/a>Housing<\/a>Consumer<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"article FILE-A for sale sign is displayed outside of a home for sale in Los Angeles, California. (Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":161824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[64,2436,7065,135,50,4329,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-161823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-consumer","10":"tag-housing","11":"tag-markets","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-real-estate","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115062669509033472","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n