Frisco ranks as top U.S. real estate market followed by 4 nearby suburbs

Frisco has ranked as this year's best real estate market in the United States, followed by four neighboring North Texas suburbs, according to a WalletHub study.

The ranking compares 300 cities across 21 metrics ranking from job growth to median home price appreciation to home sales turnover rate. So, why has Frisco landed the country's top spot?

The flourishing city is simply outbuilding the rest of the country, said WalletHub Analyst Jill Gonzalez.

"Over 10 percent of its homes are new (built between 2010 and 2015), which is one of the highest shares in the country," Gonzalez said. "It also has the highest number of building permits at nearly 40 per every 1,000 residents." Show Full Story

Frisco also has one of the highest job growth and population growth in the United States at nearly 28 percent and 34 percent, respectively, according to the study. The city also ranked No. 1 in the category for affordability and economic environment due to low cost of utilities and energy.

Since the beginning of 2010, Frisco's median price for a new home has escalated 78 percent from $285,132 to $507,757 at the end of last year, with some of those costs tied to the rising cost of dirt in the city, said Ted Wilson, principal of Dallas-based Residential Strategies, in a previous Dallas Business Journal interview.

"If you look at this trend, Frisco was a less expensive alternative to Plano when it was growing way back when and now Frisco is one of the higher-priced markets," said Wilson, adding this is a reflection of the city's maturing housing market.

Frisco isn't the only high-ranking best real estate market in North Texas. McKinney and Allen ranked No. 2 and No. 3, respectively in WalletHub's study, with Richardson ranking as the No. 5 best real estate market and Carrollton landing the No. 8 spot.

Allen had the lowest vacancy rate for single-family houses at 1.91 percent, according to the study. That rate is 19.1 times lower than Miami Beach, which has the highest vacancy rate of 36.47 percent.

And Mesquite — a North Texas city that didn't rank as a top 10 city in the WalletHub study — had one of the lowest average number of days until the house is sold at 36, along with Berkeley, Sunnyvale and San Mateo, California and Seattle.

That is 5.2 times lower than in Newark, New Jersey, which is a city that ranked the highest in this category with an average of 186 days it took to sell a single-family home.