The best cities to sell a house

When looking to sell their house, most owners probably want to make a profit and sell the home for more than they paid for it. But the selling price isn't the only factor to consider, there are hidden costs when it comes to selling a home. And if it takes a long time to sell a house or if the closing costs are exorbitant, the math may change on how much money the seller gets to pocket. We considered these factors and others when determining the best cities to sell a house.

Find out: How much home can you afford?

In order to find the best cities to sell a house, we considered five factors. We looked at the change in median home value, the percent of homes in the area sold at a loss, the average number days a home sits on the market, the closing costs and the number of real estate offices per 1,000 residents. Read the data and methodology section below to get a better understanding of how we used our data to create our ranking.

Key Findings

  • Two states race – Two states, Colorado and Texas, claimed nine out of the top 10 best places to sell a house. If you're looking to sell your home and you reside in one of those states, you may be in luck.

  • Tough sell in the Northeast – There's only one Northeast city in our top 25. One reason for that is that closing costs tend to be higher in the Northeast region. Boston, the aforementioned representative, has the third-highest closing costs in the top 25.

Data and Methodology

In order to rank the best places to sell a house, we looked at data on 161 cities with populations greater than 150,000 across five factors. Specifically we looked at the following five factors:

Change in median home value from 2011 to 2015. Data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2015 and 2011 5-Year American Community Surveys.
Average days on the market. This is how many days a home sits on the market in each city on average. Data comes from SmartAsset's healthiest housing markets hash station.
Percentage of homes sold for a loss. Data comes from SmartAsset's healthiest housing markets hash station.
Average closing costs. Data comes from SmartAsset's closing cost hash station.
Number of real estate establishments per 1,000 residents. Data on real estate establishments comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2014 County Business Patterns Survey. Population data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2015 American 5-Year American Community Survey.

We ranked each city across each factor, giving double weight to median home value change and single weight to all other factors. We then averaged those rankings giving each city a score based on those average rankings. The city with the best score received a score of 100 and the city with the worst score received a 0.

Questions about our study? Contact us at press@smartasset.com.

Best Places to Sell a House
Best Places to Sell a House

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