Birmingham One Of The Country's Least Competitive Housing Markets

BIRMINGHAM, AL - Birmingham's housing market is not very competitive, according to a study by Lending Tree. In fact, in ranking 100 of the largest metros in the country, Birmingham ranked among the 10 least competitive markets in the country.

LendingTree’s rankings of the 100 most competitive housing markets in the U.S. were based on factors that “truly create a competitive market for homebuyers,” the company explained. To compile the rankings, LendingTree looked at factors like how many house hunters are putting more money down, have high credit scores and “start loan shopping before home shopping.”

To come up with the rankings, LendingTree said it looked at 1.5 million purchase mortgage loan requests that came through the company’s marketplace in the 100 largest U.S. cities for 2017.
The cities were then ranked based on the following three criteria:

• The share of buyers shopping for a mortgage before identifying the house they want
• Average down payment percentage
• Percentage of buyers who have prime credit (above 680)

Birmingham ranked 54th in the share of buyers shopping for a mortgage before identifying their house; 90th in average down payment percentage; and 95th in percentage of people with prime credit.

The 10 cities ranking the lowest are:

Youngstown, Ohio (100)
McAllen, Texas (99)
Scranton, Pennsylvania (98)
El Paso, Texas (97)
Dayton, Ohio (96)
Augusta, Georgia (95)
Birmingham, Alabama (94)
Winston-Salem, North Carolina (93)
Little Rock, Arkansas (92)
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (91)

To see homes on the market in the Birmingham metro area, visit the Patch real estate page.

Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images