One of the big financial surprises of the pandemic is the resiliency of the real estate market.
Following a difficult spring, the housing market has bounced back, thanks to feverish activity throughout the summer and the fall. Prices have not only held up but also continued to grow, with the median listing price in the U.S. at $350,000, up 12.2% year over year in October, according to a report by Realtor.com.
The luxury real estate market has also had a good year, as wealthy consumers have been less affected by the pandemic. In fact, many wealthy buyers have fled to suburbia in efforts to escape strict urban lockdowns, which has resulted in bidding wars over suburban luxury property.
This suburban exodus has certainly left a few cities scrambling, with the nation’s top luxury markets—New York and San Francisco—experiencing a difficult year, marked by sluggish sales and discounted prices on the high end of the market.
But all luxury markets, even in America’s most expensive cities, are not created equal. There are stark differences between San Francisco and New York alone, and those differences only continue to become even more pronounced when we compare them with other markets, such as Houston or Memphis. What will buy you a luxury property in Memphis, Tenn., for instance, might not even be enough to buy you a proper one bedroom in Manhattan.
Myaffordableluxury.com recently analyzed the top 10% of listings on Redfin and Zillow (each with a price of at least $500,000—a widely accepted definition for luxury property) and ranked all the cities based on the highest threshold necessary for a home to be labeled locally as luxury property.
Here are the 20 most expensive luxury real estate markets in the country.
