Housing markets across the country have seen a general tightening of inventory and high prices, while prices are down slightly from their peaks in 2021 and 2022 before the Federal Reserve’s program of rate hikes got underway. Even though prices may have dropped from their recent peaks, affordability is still a significant problem in many important housing areas.
We intended to identify the most costly property markets in the U.S. based on important criteria like the sales-to-list ratio and the proportion of homes in a city that sold above asking price, not just on the sale price alone. We used data from RedfinRDFN -1% to obtain the numbers indicated above as well as the median sale price, available inventory, monthly number of active listings, and median number of days a home is on the market before being purchased.
The Housing Markets with the Highest Prices in 2023
According on the Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, the most recent data available, we restricted our focus to the 200 largest cities in the United States by population in order to produce a list of cities. From there, we looked at the housing markets in terms of the metrics mentioned above, with the two most important being the sales-to-list ratio and the proportion of homes that sold for more than their asking price. The sales-to-list ratio indicates whether homes are selling for more than they were originally listed by having a value of over 100%. Then, after scoring each of these variables, we ranked the cities.
Amazingly, every home sold in Lubbock during the month of July 2023 went for more than the asking price. No other property market saw a rate of 100% of properties selling for more than their asking price. Lubbock’s current median sale price is $350,000, up 45.8% from the $240,000 it was in July 2022. Both property prices and Lubbock’s inventory have increased year over year. Inventory increased by 44.2% to 950 available homes in July 2023 from 659 available homes for sale in July 2022. At the same period, from 8 days in July 2022 to 42 days in July 2023, the median days on market for a Lubbock home for sale increased sharply by 425%. Indeed, according to a separate report from the Lubbock Association of Realtors for July 2023, properties are reportedly spending 80% longer time on the market than they did at the same time last year.
In Sunnyvale, the second-most exorbitant property market, 81.3% of properties sold in July 2023 went for more than they were asking. From July 2022, when the number was 52.9%, that is an increase of about 30 percentage points. In Sunnyvale, prices have significantly increased since last year. Sunnyvale’s median sale price increased by 30.6% to about $2.09 million in July 2023 from just over $1.6 million in July 2022. Sunnyvale has the fourth-highest sale-to-list ratio in the survey, at 106.6%.
Worcester, Massachusetts—located roughly halfway between Springfield and Boston—is the third-most exorbitantly priced property market. In the Worcester real estate market, 76.1% of properties sold in July 2023 went beyond the asking price, a modest increase from 73.9% in July of last year. In Worcester, the number of current listings and available inventory have both decreased year over year by 63.4% and 40.3%, respectively. These elements are contributing to Worcester’s persistently high property prices, which will hit a median sale price of $400,000 for the first time in May 2022. In July 2019, prior to the pandemic, Worcester’s median sale price was at $269,950. Sadly, it appears that those times are now a distant memory.
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