Gotta have the latest and greatest, no matter the cost? Glued to lightning deals? Zillow ranks the best markets for holiday home shopping based on your shopping style.
When you see one of those “December to Remember” commercials from Lexus, is your first thought, “I like the idea of splurging this holiday season, but a Lexus is a little on the cheap side”? If so, maybe you should treat yo self to something a little more extravagant. Like a new home.
Zillow Research ranked[1] the 50 largest metro housing markets for holiday home shopping by how similar they are to the following five different types of holiday deals/shoppers.
For those of you who’ve already set calendar reminders to the exact minute of Amazon’s lightning deals, there are a number of housing markets that offer similar thrills. These are the markets where inventory sells extremely fast (measured as how long the typical for-sale home has been on the market), but that also offer the deepest discounts in the rare instance a listing price is slashed.
The best of these markets include the two Bay Area markets, Seattle, Detroit and Buffalo (figure 1).
Maybe lightning deals move a little too fast for you. Instead, you’re the type of bargain hunter who feeds off due diligence and finding sellers desperate to sell. To find the housing markets like this, we ranked the top 50 metros based on how many listings had a price cut in October, along with how many of that metro’s homes have sold in the past year.
The best of these types of bargains can be found in three Florida markets, plus Las Vegas and Phoenix (figure 2).
Couldn’t care less about bargains, but instead you just have to have the hottest new gadget every holiday? Do you get a certain rush from the exclusivity of your purchase? In that case, the best housing markets for you are the markets where demand is high and inventory is incredibly tight. Luckily, Zillow publishes both monthly inventory numbers and a monthly series that quantifies how high demand is in a given market.
The must-have markets this year include the two largest Pacific Northwest markets, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Nashville. (figure 3).
Do you despise the materialism of the holiday season, or tend to avoid purchasing big-ticket items at any cost? If that sounds like you, renting may be your cup of tea. To find markets where renting is the preferred choice, we ranked metros on how long it takes to break even on a home purchase (the buy-rent breakeven horizon) and local homeownership rates.[2] The best sharing economy markets will have lower homeownership rates, and longer breakeven horizons.
The best markets for the purchase-averse are LA, DC, New York, San Jose and San Diego (figure 4).
For every amazing deal available on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there are equally as many lemons you may wind up regretting. To rank housing markets based on their chance of buyer’s remorse, we looked at how much home values have appreciated this year versus how much we expect them to grow next year.
Caveat Emptor in the Silicon Valley markets (where the pace of annual home value appreciation is expected to drop by almost ten percentage points), Tampa, Dallas and Denver (figure 5).
[1] To rank across multiple metrics, we took the average of each metrics’ z-scores.
