Following the deadliest wildfire in the state of California, Chico, Calif., has seen an influx of new residents that made it the highest performing housing market in the country at the end of December last year. Chico is 14 miles from Paradise, the town destroyed by a deadly wildfire in November.
“It’s just insanity,” Sabrina Chevallier, a real estate professional with RE/MAX of Chico, told realtor.com®. “It’s been a really challenging market to gauge realistically where prices are headed.” She’s had homes sell for $50,000 above the list price one day, and then an identical home in a comparable neighborhood then get $30,000 less than the asking price.
Realtor.com® researchers analyzed which housing markets received the most listing views at its site and where homes were selling the fastest in December 2018. Smaller, secondary housing markets are most in demand, realtor.com® notes.
“They’re not just smaller, but also lower-priced,” says Javier Vivas, director of economic research at realtor.com®. “We’ve seen affordability reach a tipping point in large, high-cost markets, generating this trickle-down effect into secondary markets.”
The following 15 cities were the hottest housing markets in December 2018, according to realtor.com®:
- Chico, Calif.
- Midland, Texas
- Odessa, Texas
- Columbus, Ohio
- Fort Wayne, Ind.
- San Francisco, Calif.
- Sacramento, Calif.
- Colorado Springs, Colo.
- Boston, Mass.
- Stockton, Calif.
- Vallejo, Calif.
- Rockford, Ill.
- Detroit, Mich.
- Yuba City, Calif.
- Dallas, Texas
Source: “Disaster Propels California Town to Top of Hottest Markets List for December 2018,” realtor.com® (Jan. 9, 2019)
