U.S. Cities to Watch for Real Estate Investment in 2026

Updated August 5, 2026. This article was first published in June 2025 as a list of "top cities." It has been rebuilt from scratch against current federal data. The screen, the markets, and every figure below are new; nothing from the earlier version was carried over.

The short answer: in 2026 the U.S. markets worth a closer look are the ones where people are still arriving, employers are still hiring, and the apartment construction pipeline has thinned out. That last condition is what separates this list from a population-growth ranking. Between 2022 and 2025 several fast-growing metros permitted more apartments than their own demand could absorb, and renters — not landlords — got the benefit.

We applied a five-part screen to all 387 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas. Thirty-five passed. Six are profiled in detail below, with the evidence, the reporting period for every number, and the specific things that would break each thesis.

Nothing here is a recommendation to buy. A metro that passes a screen is a place to start underwriting, not a place to wire a deposit.

What "a market to watch" actually means

There is no universal list of best cities for real estate investment, and any article that offers one is selling something. Suitability depends on your strategy, your purchase basis, your financing, your operating assumptions, the submarket, the physical condition of the building, and your ability to execute. Two investors can buy on the same street in the same month and get opposite outcomes.

What metro-level data can honestly do is narrow the search. It can tell you where household formation is being fed by people moving in rather than by births alone, where employers are adding payroll, and whether the local development community is about to hand you several thousand new competing units. Those signals shift the odds. They do not decide a deal.

So the standard used here is deliberately modest: does the current, verifiable evidence justify spending time underwriting properties in this metro? That is a much lower bar than "should you buy here," and it is the only question a national dataset is equipped to answer.

The 2026 screen, defined before we looked at results

We wrote the five criteria down first, then applied them mechanically to every metropolitan statistical area with published data. No criterion was added, dropped, or loosened after seeing which metros passed, and no market was included because it appeared in a previous version of this article.

Two of these deserve an explanation.

Why domestic migration specifically. Net international migration fell sharply across the country in 2024–25, and the Census Bureau reported that average metro growth halved from 1.1% to 0.6% as a result, with 310 of 387 metros growing more slowly than the year before. A metro whose entire population gain came from international arrivals has a demand story that depends heavily on federal policy. One attracting domestic movers is drawing people who compared it against alternatives inside the same country.

Why a falling permit count is a positive signal. Permits filed in 2025 largely become deliveries in 2027 and 2028. A metro where permitting has dropped well below its own recent peak is a metro where the competitive supply arriving two years from now will be thinner than what arrived this year. That is an inference about a lag, not a measurement — permits are not starts, starts are not completions, and projects get abandoned. But it is the closest thing the public data offers to a forward look at competition.

Four data notes on criterion five, because the arithmetic behind it is ours rather than the Census Bureau's.

• "Multifamily" means buildings with five or more units. That is the Census structure category we summed. Duplexes and 3–4 unit buildings are excluded, so the counts understate small-scale rental construction.
• We summed county files, because there is no metro file. The Building Permits Survey no longer publishes a ready-made metro-level annual file, so we summed the county-level annual files to metro areas using the county-to-metro crosswalk in the Census population estimates release.
• Both years use the same population denominator. The 2022–23 figure is the average of the 2022 and 2023 permit counts divided by the metro's 2025 population — the same denominator used for the 2025 rate. Holding population fixed means the comparison reflects the change in permitting rather than the change in population. It also makes the historical rate look slightly lower than it was at the time, which makes the measured pullback slightly smaller, not larger.
• One state has a gap. Connecticut is absent from the 2022 county file entirely — the state moved from counties to planning regions between vintages, and 2022 falls in the seam. Connecticut metros therefore have no 2022 baseline, and we do not report a criterion-five result for them. See the note on Hartford below.

All of this is reproducible from the published files, and we have published the script that does it.

Thirty-five of 387 metros passed all five criteria. One further metro — Hartford — clears four and cannot be scored on the fifth; it is discussed below rather than counted. All thirty-five are listed further down. The six profiled in depth were selected under two further rules also fixed in advance: no more than one metro per state, and at least two from outside the Sunbelt.

What this screen cannot tell you

This is an editorial filter, not a model. It has not been back-tested, it produces no forecast, and it has no established predictive power. Before you read the results, here is what it does not establish.

• Passing does not predict returns. We have not tested whether metros meeting these five conditions in any past year went on to outperform. Without that, the screen is a description of current conditions, not evidence about future performance.
• Failing does not mean avoid. A metro can fail on one criterion and be an excellent place to own property. Several of the failing markets below are large, liquid and well capitalised.
• A falling permit count is ambiguous. We read it as supply relief. It can equally mean developers cannot get financing, cannot make deals pencil, or no longer believe in local demand — and those are bearish, not bullish. The same number supports both readings, and this screen simply picks one. Where permitting has collapsed, ask which explanation fits the local evidence.
• Criteria two and three overlap. Positive domestic migration is a component of population growth, so a metro with strong in-migration tends to clear both. Treat them as one signal observed two ways, not two independent confirmations.
• Discounting international migration is a judgement, not a finding. International arrivals form households and rent apartments just as domestic movers do. Philadelphia is the clearest case: it grew overall, gaining 18,116 international migrants against a loss of 9,736 domestic, and it fails this screen anyway. Screening on domestic migration favours metros whose demand is less exposed to federal immigration policy. It is not a claim that international demand is worth less.
• The 500,000 threshold is arbitrary. It is a liquidity and data-quality proxy — larger metros have more transactions and more reliable BLS series. There is nothing magic about the number, and good markets sit just below it.
• One year of employment growth is noisy. A single twelve-month change can reflect one large employer or a revision. June 2026 metro employment is preliminary and will be revised. Do not treat a 0.1-point difference between metros as meaningful.
• Metro geography cannot reach a property. A metropolitan statistical area can span a dozen counties. Nothing at this level of aggregation tells you whether a specific submarket, street or building is worth buying.

National conditions every local deal has to survive

Before any market-specific discussion, four national facts set the boundaries on what a 2026 acquisition can look like.

The cost of debt has not come back down

Commercial and multifamily loans are not priced off the consumer mortgage rate. Floating-rate debt is generally indexed to SOFR, and fixed-rate agency, bank and CMBS quotes are generally built off a Treasury yield of comparable term, plus a spread that depends on the lender, the leverage, the asset and the borrower. So the benchmarks that actually matter to a commercial underwriter are these, all measured in the first week of August 2026:

Note the shape of that curve: the overnight rate sits below the five- and ten-year yields. Floating-rate debt is cheaper today than fixed, but it reprices, and the forward curve is not a forecast you should underwrite to.

For context on the housing market that rental demand sits inside — not as a commercial borrowing benchmark — the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey 30-year fixed average was 6.66% for the week ending July 30, 2026. That is an average of rates offered to owner-occupant homebuyers on conforming single-family mortgages. It is not the rate available on an apartment building, it is not quoted off the same index, and the gap between it and a commercial quote is not a fixed number. We cite it because it tells you something about whether renters can afford to become buyers, and for no other reason.

None of these is your rate. Every one of them is a starting point that a lender adds a spread to. The practical consequence for underwriting is the same either way: a deal has to work on in-place income at a quoted cost of debt you have actually been given. Underwriting that only clears its hurdle after an assumed rate cut is a bet on rates, not an investment in a property.

Rental vacancy is materially higher than it was three years ago

The Census Bureau's Housing Vacancy Survey put the national rental vacancy rate at 7.3% in the second quarter of 2026, against 5.6% in the second quarter of 2022. Median asking rent for vacant units was $1,531. A looser national rental market means longer lease-up, more concessions, and less tolerance for optimistic vacancy assumptions.

The apartment delivery wave has crested

Completions of buildings with five or more units ran at an annual rate of about 413,000 in June 2026, down roughly 41% from the August 2024 peak of 705,000 (Census Bureau data via FRED). This is the fact that most directly shapes the screen below, because it is the national version of what criterion five looks for locally. The competitive pressure that pushed rents down in high-supply metros through 2025 is easing — but it eases with a lag, and it eases unevenly by metro. A national completions figure says nothing about the pipeline in any particular market.

Population growth has slowed almost everywhere

Metro population growth halved between 2023–24 and 2024–25. The metros still growing are growing more slowly than their recent history, which means demand forecasts built on 2021–2023 trend lines are now too high. Use the current year, not the trend.

Six markets worth investigating in 2026

These are presented in no particular order. We do not rank them, because the datasets are not comparable enough to support a ranking and inventing a score after seeing the results would be dishonest. Each profile gives the evidence, what an investor might research there, the risks, and what could invalidate the case.

All population figures are Census Vintage 2025 for the year ended July 1, 2025. All employment figures are BLS Current Employment Statistics for June 2026 against June 2025. All permit figures are calendar-year Census Building Permits Survey data aggregated by us. All house-price figures are the FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index for 2026 Q1 against 2025 Q1. Asking-rent direction comes from the Zillow Observed Rent Index, a private index — it is not a government statistic, and we name it every time it appears.

Raleigh–Cary, North Carolina

Why it passed. The highest employment growth of the thirty-five metros that passed the screen: nonfarm payrolls up 2.51% year over year in June 2026 (preliminary). Population rose 2.36%, with net domestic in-migration of 19,974. Multifamily permitting fell from an average of 5.45 units per 1,000 residents in 2022–23 to 3.42 in 2025.

What might warrant research. Employment is concentrated in professional and business services (19.6% of nonfarm jobs) and government (14.1%), the latter reflecting the state capital and the university system. That combination has historically produced steady white-collar renter demand rather than cyclical swings.

The risks. Raleigh still has the heaviest permit load of the six markets here. A pullback from 5.45 to 3.42 is real, but 3.42 is high in absolute terms, and Zillow's index showed asking rents essentially flat at +0.3% year over year. That is what a market still absorbing supply looks like. If you underwrite rent growth here, you are underwriting a recovery that has not yet appeared in the data.

What would break the thesis. A retrenchment in professional services hiring, or a renewed permitting surge that resets the 2028 delivery pipeline.

Huntsville, Alabama

Why it passed. Population up 2.64% — the second-fastest of the 111 metros over 500,000 — with 12,351 net domestic in-migrants against a base of 556,444. Employment rose 1.41%. House prices rose 2.59% on the FHFA index.

What might warrant research. Huntsville's employment is unusually concentrated in white-collar technical work for a metro this size: professional and business services account for 23.8% of nonfarm employment and government another 20.3%, reflecting the aerospace, defense and engineering base. Median asking rent on Zillow's index was $1,381 in June 2026, the lowest of the six profiled here. We are not publishing a local income figure to set against that rent — the Census income series we would need now sits behind a registered API key we did not use — so treat the low rent as a fact about rent, not as evidence about affordability.

The risks. That same concentration is the danger. More than 44% of nonfarm employment sits in two supersectors heavily tied to federal contracting. A defense budget shift or a major contract loss would hit this metro harder than a diversified one. Huntsville also has the smallest supply pullback of the six — 2.02 permits per 1,000 in 2025 against a 2022–23 average of 2.11 — so it passed criterion five by a narrow margin.

What would break the thesis. Federal budget contraction, or a single large employer decision. Verify which specific programs your submarket's tenant base depends on before you underwrite.

Lakeland–Winter Haven, Florida

Why it passed. The fastest population growth of any metro over 500,000 that passed the screen: 2.74%, driven by 18,752 net domestic in-migrants. Employment grew 1.28%. Multifamily permitting fell from a 2022–23 average of 3.51 per 1,000 residents to 1.56 in 2025 — a pullback of more than half.

What might warrant research. Lakeland sits on the I-4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando and has absorbed households priced out of both. Trade, transportation and utilities make up 27.7% of nonfarm employment, the highest share of the six, reflecting the metro's role as a distribution hub.

The risks. Two, and both are serious. First, that 27.7% logistics concentration cuts both ways: warehouse and distribution employment is sensitive to consumer demand and to automation. Second, Florida property insurance is a live and volatile underwriting line. Citizens Property Insurance — the state-backed insurer of last resort — received approval in March 2026 for an average 8.8% reduction on homeowners multiperil policies effective July 1, 2026. That is a genuine improvement, but it is one insurer of last resort, not the whole market, and it is not a commercial property quote. Get a real bound quote on the specific asset before you model an insurance expense in Florida.

What would break the thesis. A hurricane season that reverses the insurance trend, or a downturn in goods movement along the corridor.

San Antonio–New Braunfels, Texas

Why it passed. The largest proportional supply pullback of the thirty-five metros that passed. Multifamily permitting fell from a 2022–23 average of 3.68 units per 1,000 residents to 0.47 in 2025 — roughly one-eighth of the earlier pace, and 1,311 units in absolute terms across a metro of 2.8 million people. Meanwhile population grew 1.38% with 18,763 net domestic in-migrants, and employment grew 0.62%.

What might warrant research. This is the clearest example on the list of the pattern the screen is designed to find: a metro still gaining households while developers have almost entirely stopped starting new apartments. If the permit-to-delivery lag holds, competitive new supply in 2027–28 will be a fraction of what it has been. Employment is anchored by government at 15.4% of payrolls, reflecting a large military presence, plus education and health at 15.3%.

The risks. Rents were still falling when we measured: Zillow's index showed asking rents down 1.8% year over year in June 2026, at $1,416. Our reading is that units permitted in 2023 and 2024 are still working through lease-up, and that overhang would have to clear before rents turn — but that is an inference from the permit data, not something we measured directly. Employment growth of 0.62% is the weakest of the six. Anyone buying here is buying into a market that is soft today, on the argument that the pipeline behind it is nearly empty.

What would break the thesis. Permitting restarting at scale in 2026–27, which would refill the pipeline before the current overhang clears. Also watch military basing decisions given the government employment share.

Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, Minnesota–Wisconsin

Why it passed. At 3.79 million residents it is much the largest of the thirty-five metros that passed outside the Sunbelt — the next is Albany–Schenectady–Troy at 916,000 — and it has the most evenly spread employment base of the six profiled here. Employment grew 1.16%; population grew 0.78% with 7,690 net domestic in-migrants. That last figure is the striking one: over the same twelve months New York lost 168,105 residents to net domestic migration, Chicago 33,708, Boston 29,132 and Philadelphia 9,736. Minneapolis–St. Paul gained. Multifamily permitting fell from a 2022–23 average of 3.32 per 1,000 to 1.38 in 2025.

What might warrant research. Both price and rent measures are positive here: FHFA house prices up 3.46% year over year, and Zillow's asking-rent index up 3.4% against a national ZORI change of +2.2%. Reno, below, is higher on both. What Minneapolis–St. Paul has that Reno does not is spread: no single supersector exceeds 20% of employment, and education and health is the largest at 19.6%. That diversification, not the rent number, is the case here.

The risks. Regulatory, and geographically specific. The City of Saint Paul operates a rent stabilization ordinance that caps most rent increases at 3% in a 12-month period, with a defined exception process for higher increases and an exemption for newer construction. It applies to Saint Paul, not to Minneapolis and not to the suburbs — which means the regulatory environment changes at municipal boundaries inside one metro. Confirm which jurisdiction a property sits in and read the current ordinance text before underwriting any rent growth.

What would break the thesis. Expansion of rent regulation to other jurisdictions in the metro, or the loss of a major corporate employer.

Reno, Nevada

Why it passed. A large proportional supply pullback: from a 2022–23 average of 4.99 multifamily permits per 1,000 residents to 1.67 in 2025, a third of the earlier pace. Employment grew 1.49% and population 0.94%, with 3,635 net domestic in-migrants. Three metros in the passing set cut permitting harder in proportional terms — San Antonio, and then Scranton–Wilkes-Barre and Boise City, though Scranton's permit counts are far too small for the ratio to mean much.

What might warrant research. Of the six profiled here, Reno has the highest rent and price growth on both measures: Zillow's index showed asking rents up 6.3% year over year to $2,004 in June 2026, against +2.2% nationally, and FHFA house prices rose 3.77%. Manufacturing is 11.1% of employment, high for a metro this size, reflecting the industrial corridor east of the city.

The risks. At 578,734 residents it is the smallest metro here, which means individual employer decisions move the whole market and transaction volume is thin enough that comparable evidence is scarce. Trade, transportation and utilities is 21.4% of employment and leisure and hospitality another 14.4% — a mix that is exposed to both goods movement and discretionary travel. And the strong rent growth cuts against you as a buyer: if the market has already repriced, the opportunity the screen identified may largely be in the ask.

What would break the thesis. Pricing that has already moved past the fundamentals, a single-employer setback, or a consumer pullback hitting tourism and logistics together.

Side-by-side comparison

Population and migration: Census Vintage 2025, year ended July 2025. Employment: BLS, June 2026 vs June 2025. Permits: Census Building Permits Survey, calendar years, aggregated by DealWorthIt. House prices: FHFA All-Transactions index, 2026 Q1 vs 2025 Q1. Asking rent: Zillow Observed Rent Index (private index), June 2026 vs June 2025.

Read that table for the tension inside it, not for a winner. Of the six: San Antonio has the emptiest pipeline and the weakest current rents; Reno has the highest rent and price growth and, for that reason, the least room left to buy in; Lakeland–Winter Haven adds population fastest; and Huntsville has the most concentrated employment base, with 44% of payrolls in two supersectors. No row is ahead on everything, which is exactly why we do not rank them.

The full screen results: all 35 metros that passed

Publishing only the six we profiled would make the selection unfalsifiable. Here are all thirty-five metros that cleared every criterion, so you can check our work — and find markets we did not profile that may fit your strategy better than ours.

Sorted by population growth. Columns as defined above.

A few of these deserve a caution. Pensacola and Scranton pass criterion five on permit counts so small that the ratio is not very meaningful. And passing does not mean prices are rising: two metros on this list had falling house prices over the year to 2026 Q1 on the FHFA index — Cape Coral–Fort Myers at −2.67% and Austin at −0.80%, with Austin still about 12% below its 2022 Q2 level. Passing this screen is a starting condition, not a verdict.

What happened to the markets in the 2025 version of this article

The earlier version of this page had eleven numbered sections covering seventeen metro areas. We ran every one of them through the same five criteria. Six still pass, ten do not, and one — Hartford — cannot be evaluated on criterion five at all, for the Connecticut data reason described above. Showing that is more useful than quietly changing the list.

A word on Hartford, because it is the one we cannot answer. Hartford clears the population, growth, domestic-migration and employment tests. Its criterion-five result depends on a 2022 permit baseline that does not exist: Connecticut has no rows at all in the Census county file for 2022, having moved from counties to planning regions between vintages. Treating that absence as zero would manufacture a failure, and filling it with an estimate would manufacture a pass. So Hartford is reported as undetermined and is not counted among the thirty-five. On a 2023-only baseline it would clear criterion five — but we are not willing to change the rule for one metro, and you should know that is the direction the incomplete evidence points.

Note what happened to the specific claims. The old article recommended Hartford on the strength of a vendor's 2025 price forecast, and Kansas City and Salt Lake City on forecast price growth. Those forecasts are not republished here, because a forecast is not evidence. Failing this screen does not make a market a bad investment — Pittsburgh and Cleveland are perfectly reasonable places to own cash-flowing property. It means the specific 2026 case this article is making does not apply to them.

How to test a city thesis against an actual building

A strong metro contains weak submarkets, and a weak submarket contains bad deals. Metro data narrows the search; it never underwrites the asset. Here is the order of operations that keeps the two separate.

1. Move from metro to submarket. Metro-level statistics describe an area that can span a dozen counties. Employment growth in a suburban office corridor tells you very little about a neighborhood twenty miles away. Get to census-tract or neighborhood level before you form a view on demand.
2. Price the debt at today's terms. Get an actual quote — rate, term, amortization, prepayment, recourse, reserve requirements. A deal that only works at a rate nobody is currently offering is not a deal.
3. Underwrite the in-place income, then the upside separately. Start with what the property earns now. Read the rent roll for real occupancy, delinquency, concessions, and lease expirations, and reconcile it against the T12 operating statement. Model any improvement as a separate scenario you can turn off.
4. Get real numbers for the expenses that vary most by market. Insurance, property taxes after reassessment at your purchase price, utilities, and payroll. In several of the markets above, insurance alone can swing net operating income more than a full point of rent growth.
5. Assume a longer lease-up than the seller does. National rental vacancy is 7.3%. If your model shows units filling in thirty days at asking rent with no concessions, it is not describing the market you are buying into.
6. Stress the exit. Model a sale at a cap rate above your going-in cap rate. If the return only works because the exit cap is lower than the entry cap, the return is a bet on the market, not on the asset. Our guide to what makes a reasonable cap rate covers how to frame that assumption.
7. Write down what would make you wrong. Every profile above ends with a "what would break the thesis" line for a reason. If you cannot name the evidence that would change your mind, you are not underwriting — you are hoping.

For the fuller mechanics, see our step-by-step guides to performing a market analysis, underwriting a multifamily deal, and assessing and mitigating risk in multifamily investing.

How DealWorthIt supports market research and underwriting

DealWorthIt is a research and underwriting workspace for real estate professionals. It does not decide whether you should invest, and it does not guarantee the accuracy of third-party data. What it does is keep the market research and the deal math in one place so the assumptions you take from a market screen stay visible in the model.

• Property search and research. Search properties and filter on listing status, ownership, sale history, and financial characteristics, then open a property record showing owner information, sale history, and current and historical mortgages.
• Market context alongside the deal. Pull demographic and employment data for the market a property sits in, so the metro-level picture sits next to the underwriting rather than in a separate spreadsheet.
• T12 and rent roll import. Upload a trailing-twelve operating statement or a rent roll as a PDF, CSV, or spreadsheet and have it parsed into structured line items you can review and correct before they reach the model.
• Multiple scenarios per property. Build several sets of assumptions on the same deal — different rent growth, different debt, different hold periods — and compare them side by side.
• Forward projections and exit modeling. Project cash flow across the hold and model a sale or a refinance at the end of it.
• Return and financing metrics. Cap rate, cash-on-cash return, DSCR, IRR, and equity multiple, with loan amortization detail.
• Team collaboration. Share a deal with colleagues and control who can see which scenarios.

Data in the platform comes from third-party providers and is cached, not live. Treat every figure — ours, a vendor's, or a broker's — as something to verify during due diligence rather than something to rely on.

Frequently asked questions

What makes a city attractive for real estate investment in 2026?

Three things measured together: households still arriving (net domestic migration), employers still hiring (nonfarm payroll growth), and a construction pipeline that is thinning rather than expanding. In 2026 the third matters more than usual, because the 2022–2024 apartment building wave pushed national rental vacancy from 5.6% in mid-2022 to 7.3% in mid-2026. A metro with all three is worth underwriting. A metro with only the first two may still be handing renters the negotiating power.

Are fast-growing cities automatically good investment markets?

No, and this cycle demonstrates it clearly. San Antonio added 18,763 net domestic migrants in the year to July 2025, and Zillow's asking-rent index still showed rents falling 1.8% year over year in June 2026, because the metro had permitted more apartments than that growth could absorb. Phoenix added 22,256 net domestic migrants over the same period and its asking rents were essentially flat. Growth creates demand; supply determines who captures it. Compare the two, never one alone.

Which metrics should investors compare across markets?

At minimum: population change split into domestic and international migration; nonfarm employment growth; employment concentration by industry (a metro with 40% of jobs in two sectors is a different risk than one with no sector above 20%); multifamily permits per 1,000 residents against that metro's own recent history; rental vacancy where reliable metro data exists; and the local cost of insurance and property tax after reassessment. Compare each metro against its own past as well as against other metros — absolute permit counts mean little without the local base.

How do interest rates affect market selection?

Higher borrowing costs compress what any given income stream can support, which narrows the set of markets where a deal clears at current asking prices. Commercial debt is priced off SOFR for floating-rate loans (3.66% on August 4, 2026) or off a Treasury of matching term for fixed-rate loans (4.40% at five years, 4.70% at ten, August 3, 2026), plus a spread your lender sets. At those levels, markets with a low entry basis relative to achievable rent have an arithmetic advantage over high-price markets where the case depends on appreciation. Rates also affect supply: they are part of why permitting fell in most of the markets above, which is the condition this screen is built around. What rates should not do is enter your model as an assumed future cut.

How should investors validate a city-level thesis against a specific property?

Treat the metro screen as a filter and the property as the decision. Move down to submarket data, get an actual debt quote, underwrite in-place income before any upside, obtain real insurance and post-reassessment tax numbers, assume a slower lease-up than the seller does, and stress the exit cap rate above your entry. Then write down what evidence would prove you wrong. A strong metro cannot rescue a bad basis, bad debt, or bad execution.

Sources and methodology notes

Every figure in this article comes from one of the following. Where we did arithmetic on published data, we say so.

• U.S. Census Bureau — Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Area Population Totals, 2020–2025. Population, net domestic migration, and net international migration for the year ended July 1, 2025.
• U.S. Census Bureau — Vintage 2025 metro and county estimates press release, March 26, 2026. National metro growth slowdown and its causes.
• U.S. Census Bureau — Building Permits Survey. County-level annual files for 2022, 2023 and 2025, units in structures with five or more units, summed to metro areas by DealWorthIt using the Census county-to-metro crosswalk. Connecticut is absent from the 2022 file and no criterion-five result is reported for Connecticut metros.
• U.S. Census Bureau — Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Q2 2026, released July 28, 2026. National rental vacancy rate and median asking rent.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — State and Metro Area Employment. Total nonfarm employment (seasonally adjusted) and supersector detail (not seasonally adjusted) for June 2026. Metro employment estimates are preliminary and subject to revision.
• FHFA House Price Index — metropolitan area datasets. All-Transactions index, 2026 Q1. This index includes appraisal-based valuations and therefore behaves differently from a purchase-only repeat-sales index.
• Secured Overnight Financing Rate via FRED (published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York), 5-year and 10-year Treasury constant-maturity yields (U.S. Treasury), and the federal funds target upper bound (Federal Reserve). Levels as of the dates given in the table.
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey via FRED. 30-year fixed-rate average for owner-occupant conforming single-family mortgages, week ending July 30, 2026. Cited as housing-market context only; it is not a commercial borrowing benchmark.
• U.S. Census Bureau housing completions, 5+ unit structures, via FRED. Seasonally adjusted annual rate, June 2026 and the August 2024 peak.
• Citizens Property Insurance Corporation — 2026 multiperil rate order, March 4, 2026. Florida rate change for the state-backed insurer of last resort.
• City of Saint Paul — Rent Stabilization Ordinance. Current cap, exception process, and exemptions.
• Zillow Research — Zillow Observed Rent Index. A private asking-rent index, used only for rent direction at metro level because no federal dataset publishes metro asking rents for areas this small. Identified as a private index everywhere it is used.

What we deliberately did not publish. No cap rate, cash-on-cash return, IRR, rent forecast, or price forecast appears anywhere above, because we cannot support one for a metro we have not underwritten a property in. Where a figure could not be verified from a source that supports the exact claim, we removed the claim rather than approximating it — including several Florida insurance premium figures that varied by more than a factor of two across the sources offering them.

Interpretation, clearly marked. Three statements above are DealWorthIt's reading rather than measurement: that a thinner 2025 permit count implies thinner 2027–28 deliveries; that population growth has not by itself produced rent growth this cycle; and that metro indicators justify research rather than purchase. The evidence for each is given; the inference is ours, and the section on what this screen cannot tell you sets out where each inference could be wrong.

Disclaimer

This article is general information about publicly available economic and housing data. It is not investment, financial, legal, tax, or lending advice, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any property or security. No market described here is safe, recession-proof, or guaranteed to appreciate. Real estate can lose value, rental income can fall short of projections, and leverage magnifies both outcomes. Data cited is accurate as of the reporting periods stated and will change. Verify every figure against its primary source and consult qualified professionals about your own circumstances before making an investment decision.