- Virginia Beach ranks overall as the no. 1 place to live as a real estate agent.
- Austin, Houston, D.C. and Chicago rank as the best large cities for real estate agents.
- The top cities for large, mid-sized and small metros are all seller-favored.
Ever think of packing up your bags and heading to a new city to sell real estate? The beauty of being in the real estate business is its flexibility and the ability to take it anywhere.
Some cities are better, more lucrative and less competitive for real estate agents than others. So, really, where are the best places cities for real estate agents?
Value Penguin recently released its list of best cities for real estate agents, factoring in four main components: number of jobs, average salary, cost of living and location quotient. The company gathered data from 252 cities comprising those factors.
Virginia Beach ranked no. 1 for real estate agents. It ranked no. 16 for the number of jobs, no. 20 for location and no. 22 for average salary.
Luckily for agents, the top 5 ranking cities are all warm-weather cities. West Palm Beach ranked no. 2, Austin no. 3, Fort Lauderdale no. 4 and Wilmington, N.C. rounded out the top 5.
Value Penguin also broke down the city rankings by large (more than 500,000), mid-sized (100,000 to 500,000) and small (less than 100,000). With this ranking, Austin, Virginia Beach and Olympia, Wash., were ranked as the top cities for real estate agents.
Three best cities for real estate agents cater to sellers
There’s one big overarching theme for the real estate markets in the top cities: they are all swaying toward sellers. According to Altos Research, a California-based real estate analytics company, Virginia Beach, Austin and Olympia are all seller markets.
The company uses its unique value called the Market Action Index to determine whether buyers or sellers have the upper hand, which is based on a scale that values 30 as neutral. Virginia Beach had the most neutral market with a score of 32.08 as of May 6.
Olympia’s real estate market was the most seller-friendly with a score of 45.22. Inventory has been falling there, helping to push demand toward home sellers.
Austin is just slightly less skewed toward sellers, scoring 40.53 at the start of May. The Lone Star State capital actually saw a slight dip in the week ending May 6 as more inventory is coming into play.
