Fall Housing Market Ranking: Appleton Takes the Top Spot as 19 of the Top 20 Metros Cluster in the Midwest and Northeast
The Wall Street Journal and Realtor.com released the Fall 2026 Housing Market Ranking on October 29, evaluating the 200 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas on housing market conditions, economic health and livability. Appleton, Wisconsin rose to the top spot, and 19 of the top 20 markets are in the Midwest and Northeast.
Appleton, with a population of about 250,000 anchored by manufacturing, is the smallest metro in the top 20; it ranked second in the summer and finished first this quarter on well-rounded favorability rather than any single breakout metric. Its September median listing price was $405,000 with unemployment at 2.8%; active listings were up 104.4% year over year and homes spent just 40 days on market, about three weeks less than the national norm.
South Bend-Mishawaka, on the Indiana-Michigan line, ranked second with a median listing price of $322,000, followed by Canton-Massillon, Ohio at $266,000, Manchester-Nashua, New Hampshire fourth and Lancaster, Pennsylvania fifth. The top 20 averaged about 523,000 residents; only Grand Rapids and Hartford exceed one million.
Volatile, generally rising mortgage rates squeezed buyer budgets: at the current rate, the typical monthly payment is about 12.2% higher than a year ago due to rates alone, and home prices would need to fall 11% to bring payments back to year-ago levels, which the report calls unlikely. Nationally, the median listing price fell 1.4% year over year in September, its 11th straight monthly decline, while the typical top-20 market saw prices rise about 1.1% over the past year, with 11 of the 20 gaining.
Top markets remain seller-friendly holdouts: they averaged just 41 days on market in September against a national norm of 61 days, and saw price reductions on 18.5% of listings versus 20.8% nationally. The Midwest is solidly seller-friendly and the Northeast had no buyer's markets among the metros analyzed; price cuts appeared on just 15.2% of Northeast listings, versus 22.8% in the West and 21.6% in the South.
Realtor.com's Market Clock placed the national market at 4 o'clock, late balanced territory, as of October 2026, shifting more buyer-friendly after sitting at 3 o'clock in previous months. The report concludes that mid-sized metros where prices still pencil out against local incomes will keep drawing buyer attention while rates stay high.
Fall 2026 WSJ/Realtor.com Housing Market Ranking (official report)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 《华尔街日报》/Realtor.com 2026年秋季住房市场排名报告图（官方图）。Realtor.com 经济研究，2026年10月29日。 / Graphic from the Fall 2026 WSJ/Realtor.com Housing Market Ranking report. Realtor.com Economic Research, October 29, 2026.
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