Lafayette remains No. 1 emerging housing market

The Lafayette-West Lafayette market has maintained its top position in the Wall Street Journal/Realtor.com emerging housing markets spring index, while another Indiana community had a more than 100-point drop from its previous ranking. The quarterly survey also shows two other Indiana communities are among the top 10 markets.

The Tippecanoe County communities were ranked No. 1 in the winter 2023 index.

The index identifies the top metro areas, among 300, for home buyers looking for a market that will appreciate, a strong local economy and appealing lifestyle amenities. The partners say the communities on the list “offer a high quality of life and are expected to see future home price appreciation.”

South Bend-Mishawaka, which was ranked No. 15 in the winter survey, plummeted 102 spots in the most recent reading.

While not the only community to fall out of the top 20, the northern Indiana cities had the largest plunge among the 300 most-populace statistical areas in the WSJ/Realtor.com index.

“As economic conditions have changed since earlier in the year, with mortgage rates rising sharply, these largely affordable markets fell out of favor in exchange for even lower-priced areas,” stated the WSJ.

The Elkhart-Goshen metropolitan statistical area ranking is unchanged at No. 3. Fort Wayne dropped three spots from the winter index, coming in at No. 5 overall.

Rounding out the top five: Bloomington, Illinois is the No. 2 market and Lebanon, Pennsylvania is No. 5.

News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWA) is parent of the Wall Street Journal and operates Realtor.com.