Understanding real estate market health across the U.S.

It currently takes around 50 days for a home to be on the market before it sells, which is not a historically high number, according to Fred Economic Data . However, a recent report analyzed how real estate markets vary across the United States.

WalletHub compared 300 similarly structured American cities and ranked the health of their housing markets.

“Current home prices are extremely important, but there’s much more that you need to look at when determining the health of a city’s real estate market,” WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe said, per the study.

“Factors like the cost of living, the potential for the value of homes to increase, the availability of recently-built homes and the quality of the city’s job market are all important to consider in conjunction with asking prices and interest rates. The best cities may not always be the cheapest, but they offer excellent housing options and long-term stability,” she added.

Top five real estate markets:

1. McKinney, Texas
2. Frisco, Texas
3. Cary, North Carolina
4. Nashville, Tennessee
5. Durham, North Carolina

Top five worst real estate markets:

1. New Orleans, Louisiana
2. Baltimore, Maryland
3. Shreveport, Louisiana
4. Baton Rouge, Louisiana
5. Jackson, Mississippi

Utah ranked 33rd overall but 206th in terms of affordability and economic environment. According to the National Association of Realtors , the real estate market in Utah accounted for $54.1 billion in gross state product, or 19.9%, last year.

Clever Real Estate shared the following Utah home-selling statistics:

• Average time to sell: 85 days
• Average days on the market: 50 days
• Average time to close offer: 35 days
• Median sale price: $627,100

Feds confirm mortgage rate cut

Freddie Mac reported that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage on a house currently stands at 6.46%, which is also the 52-week average.

Strained by the high rates and lack of inventory, buyers and sellers look forward to the potential for the Federal Reserve to cut mortgage rates in September. On Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said, “‘The time has come for policy to adjust,’ signaling the start of a cutting cycle at the Fed’s Sept. 18 meeting,” according to Redfin .

Redfin added, “After repeatedly saying for the majority of the year that he needed to see more evidence that inflation is coming back to target, Powell has now seen enough. In fact, he acknowledged that ‘the balance of the risks to our two mandates has changed’ and going forward, the mission is doing ‘everything we can to support a strong labor market as we make further progress toward price stability.’”

With this news, the housing market is looking more optimistic for people entering it in the next couple of months.