For the first time ever, U.S. News & World Report has named the Omaha metropolitan area as the hottest housing market in America, according to an article released this week.
Based on data from January 2025, U.S. News’ analysis of the hottest housing markets incorporates a wide array of data points and provides a simple-yet-comprehensive way to rank the covered metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) from “frigid to balmy” on a scale of 1-100. To earn its number-one ranking the Omaha MSA received a score of 76.2.
In general, the hottest housing markets this year are not the major population centers that dominated in the past. The state of Colorado had four MSAs make the list, while South Carolina and Texas each had three. According to the article, this year’s hottest housing markets “seem to share big-city amenities without the high housing costs of MSAs closer to the megacities along the West and East coasts.”
Here are the top 10 hottest markets and their Housing Market Index scores:
1. Omaha – 76.2
2. Austin – 72.3
3. Houston – 72.1
4. Charleston, S.C. – 71.6
5. Denver – 71.5
6. St. Louis – 71.1
7. Columbia, S.C. – 70.9
8. (tie) Greeley, Colo. – 70.3
8. (tie) Greenville, S.C. – 70.3
9. San Antonio – 69.9
10. Detroit – 69.6
Several other MSAs in our region made the top 20 including #11 Kansas City (68.5); #16 Minneapolis-St. Paul (66.9); #17 Fort Collins, Colo. (66.1); #19 Colorado Springs (65.5); and #20 Oklahoma City (65.0).
Omaha’s Housing Market Index score of 76.2 rose 0.7 points year-over-year through January and compares with 75.5 in January 2024. During the same period, the overall U.S. score fell by -0.8 points to 66.6. Omaha’s scores have consistently ranked higher than the U.S. average since December 2019.
Omaha’s housing-market strengths include positive job growth, robust economic development activities, low unemployment rate, lower-than-average cost of living and the city’s use of Sanitary Improvement Districts to develop new residential subdivisions.
Although the article’s author was a bit surprised to see Omaha taking the top spot for the first time, he spoke to a number of local experts who didn’t seem terribly surprised. Omaha’s real estate practitioners have a great deal of confidence in their market.
“From robust economic development efforts by the Chamber of Commerce and an extremely active president of the Omaha Area Board of Realtors to a home builder of semi-custom homes who is grateful for the camaraderie offered by his competitors at the Metro Omaha Builders Association, it was easy to get a sense of why this ‘big small town where handshakes mean something’ is becoming more than a sleeper hit,” said Patrick Duffy, senior real estate economist at U.S. News & World Report.
During the 12-month period ending this past December, the Omaha MSA gained more than 12,000 nonfarm jobs, for a growth rate of about 2.4 percent, according to the article. Omaha’s unemployment rate in December was just 2.8 percent versus 4.1 percent nationally.
As housing has become tighter in Omaha, the share of multi-family units has grown vis-à-vis single-family houses, according to the article. Over the past year, 41 percent of Omaha’s residential building permits have been multi-family units compared to just 32 percent of permits in 2018.
Omaha’s median home sales price has fallen from a record high of $325,000 last June to $304,000 now.
“Last June, the Omaha MSA had under 1.2 months of supply, making for an unusually tight seller’s market. Since then, while the supply has varied month to month, ultimately rising to 2.2 months, it’s still much lower than the national average of 3.6 months,” the article said.
Median rent in Omaha has increased 4.3 percent year-over-year to $1,348 per month, the article said. That’s still 30 percent lower than the national level. Rental vacancy is down 1.5 percentage points to 5.6 percent.
To read the entire U.S. News article and see a wide variety of charts and graphs, click HERE.
Photo by Brad Williams
