A new ranking gauging competition in U.S. housing markets revealed that 8 out of the 10 most competitive markets were on the West Coast, with Denver and Honolulu as the exceptions. San Francisco ranked number one.
Using three metrics -- the share of homebuyers shopping for a mortgage before identifying a house, the average down payment percentage, and the share of homebuyers with prime credit, LendingTree ranked the 10 most competitive and 10 most accessible housing markets in the nation, concluding that "The strength [of competition] in the Bay Area may be attributed to the concentration of high-paying technology jobs. This also applies to Seattle, which came in at No. 7, and Portland at No. 9."
At the other end of our list are cities where less than half of home shoppers apply for their mortgage before house hunting; the average down payment is just 12 percent; and less than 40 percent of shoppers have prime credit scores. This is great news for buyers in Youngstown, Ohio, McAllen, Texas, and Scranton, Pa., and other accessible cities, which are often in rustbelt and southern states, as homeownership is accessible to a larger part of the population.
