The best place to buy a house in the U.S.? North and Northeast Texas. That’s according to a new report by personal finance website WalletHub, which ranks three Collin County cities as the top three markets to buy in the country.
Frisco, McKinney, and Allen took gold, silever, and bronze, respectively, in WalletHub’s rankings. Nearby Richardson and Denton also finished in the top 10. North Texas overall had five cities in the top 20, including Carrollton and Fort Worth.
Steven Powell, an agent for JP & Associates Realtors in Frisco, says part of the reason North Texas is such a draw is due to how stable the region’s real estate market was following the 2008 crash.
“When that happened we only lost 10 percent of our value here, whereas Arizona, California, Florida, Las Vegas, places like that lost up to 40 percent,” Powell says.
Powell says the region’s housing values traditionally have gone up 2 to 3 percent a year until recently. The last few years North Texas prices had been rising around 10 percent a year. But that’s cooling.
“I think what we’re starting to see right now is the market slow down,” Powell says. “It’s getting a little bit more difficult for people to afford the kind of houses they could a couple years ago because houses are starting to sit on the market a little bit longer.”
Powell says this dynamic isn’t a sign of imminent collapse, but rather that the North Texas real estate market is stabilizing itself.
