Homes sales are sluggish in much of the country right now.
But in one major metropolitan area in the Midwest, homes are selling nearly twice as quickly as the rest of the United States, the August 2025 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report from Realtor.com found.
The place with the fastest selling homes among the 50 most populated metro areas across the country? Milwaukee, where the median for-sale home sat on the market for just 32 days, compared to the 60 days it took for buyers to snap up a typical U.S. property.
The report found that half of the nation’s dozen metro areas where homes remained unsold for less than 40 days last month were in the Midwest, three were in the Northeast and three were in the South. None were in the West.
Affordability is driving the pace, according to Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel.
“With high mortgage rates and stubbornly high list prices keeping demand and home sales at record low levels in most parts of the country, relatively less expensive markets have become more affordable and more attractive,” Krimmel said in a Wednesday post.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, the median listing price for a home in August was $399,900, only 0.2% higher than a year earlier. Realtor.com pointed out that’s “well below the national median of $429,990, which was flat year over year.”
At the same time, the report showed there were 6% more homes for sale in Milwaukee compared to August 2024, although new listings in the city fell 3.4% year over year.
The cities ranked behind Milwaukee for having the fastest-selling homes are Buffalo, New York; Chicago; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Cincinnati, all at 39 days; and Detroit; Hartford, Connecticut; and Providence, Rhode Island, at 38 days.
The four metro areas where it took 39 days for a typical home to sell are Louisville, Kentucky; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; and Minneapolis. Washington, D.C., had the highest median listing price of any metro areas on the list, at around $600,000.