10 Best Housing Markets For Buyers & Sellers

10 Best Markets For Home Buyers

Of the 10 metro areas that have the best conditions for buyers as home-shopping season approaches, three are in Florida - Miami, Tampa and Orlando - but the best market overall for buyers is New York, according to the Zillow Buyer-Seller Index.

It is not that New York is all that affordable: its median home value in January was $438,300, almost double the U.S. median of $225,300.  but other aspects of the New York market are a boon to buyers who can afford it.  For example, among the largest 35 metros, it has the longest number of days on the market, at 132 days.  The next longest time on market is 102 days in Chicago.  It is followed by Miami, at 99 days.

Two other Florida metros - Tampa and Orlando - rank in the top five for the share of listings with a price cut, a pro-buyer characteristic.  In Tampa, 23.2% of the listings received a price cut in January.  In Orlando, it was 20.4%.

The third metric in the buyer-seller index is the sale-to-list-price ratio.  A ratio above 100% indicates that buyers are paying more than list price.  The further the ratio falls below 100%, the better the market is for buyers - because they are paying that much less than list, which would be 100% even.  The lowest ratios among the largest metros are Pittsburgh, at 93.7%, Miami at 93.9% and Chicago at 94.2%.

10 Best Markets For Home Sellers

As home selling season approaches, tech hubs San Francisco, San Jose, Calif., and Seattle lead the list of metro areas that are poised to be the best for sellers.

These are also three of the priciest markets in the country, which can be attractive for sellers, depending on how much they paid for their homes and how long they have owned them.

In San Francisco, the best market for sellers overall, the median home value is $957,400.  In San Jose, it is $1.25 million.

But home values (also reflected in prices) are not what makes these the best metros for sellers.  The Zillow Buyer-Seller Index uses three metrics that capture market trends and are a robust measure of buyer/seller dynamics.  The metrics are: what share of listings in an area have had a price cut, how long listings sit on the market, and sale-to-list-price ratios.

Among the country's largest 35 metro areas, San Francisco had the smallest share of price cuts in January, at 11.5%.  It also had the shortest median number of days on the market, at 57 days for homes sold in December, the most recent month for which data are available.  And its sale-to-list-price ratio, which gauges whether sellers are getting their asking prices at sale, is the second-highest, with sellers getting 98.6% of their asking prices, at the median.