Bolstered by strong home values and low unemployment rates, San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley and Raleigh, North Carolina, another emerging tech hub, topped Zillow’s survey of the top 10 hottest housing markets of 2018. But nearly all the markets were home to thriving tech businesses.
Zillow’s hottest markets list attempts to predict which markets will be in highest demand for housing in 2018. It ranks the markets in order of desirability and is based on a number of factors, according to Zillow. Among them: Zillow’s forecast for how home and rent values will change in the next year, income and recent population changes, the current unemployment rate, job availability via job posting and review website Glassdoor. See the full list here:
- San Jose, California
- Raleigh, North Carolina
- Seattle, Washington
- Charlotte, North Carolina
- San Francisco, California
- Austin, Texas
- Denver, Colorado
- Nashville, Tennessee
- Portland, Oregon
- Dallas, Texas
See Zillow’s predictions for the top housing markets of 2018. Credit: Zillow
“The tech industry continues to roar, attracting thousands of new residents per year to tech-dominant markets like Seattle, Denver and the Bay Area,” said Zillow’s senior economist Aaron Terrazas in a prepared statement. “The higher cost of living in these areas is offset to a large degree by well-paying tech jobs.”
Zillow further predicts that every market on its list with the exception of Denver will see their home values rise more rapidly than the rest of the nation.
In San Jose — home to Adobe, PayPal and Cisco — low unemployment and wide-open job availability have helped raise median home values to more than $1 million, with a projected increase of 9 percent in 2018, according to data provided by Zillow. Median rental prices in the city, known to many as the so-called capital of Silicon Valley, stand now at $3,514 per month.
In Austin, which came in at no. 6, population growth has surged by 2.8 percent year-over-year while Seattle is expected to see the highest rent hikes in 2018, with rates expected to climb 3.5 percent over the next 12 months, according to Zillow.
Elsewhere, Raleigh enjoyed one of the biggest population spikes among the 10 cities, at 2.3 percent, and Nashville’s 2.2 percent unemployment rate was among the lowest of the cities, according to Zillow.
Email Jotham Sederstrom.