MIDLAND TOPS HOUSING MARKETS THANKS TO OIL BOOM

A Texas city has landed on top of the list of the country’s hottest housing markets.

But the boomtown isn’t Dallas, Austin or Houston.

The West Texas oil patch town of Midland is the top U.S. home market in Realtor.com’s ranking for May.

With the energy industry rebound, housing demand in the Permian Basin has surged in the last year.

A Midland home took a median of 28 days to sell.

Until recently, California cities dominated Realtor.com’s monthly hot housing report.

“The California housing market has been hot for a long time—but may be too hot,” Javier Vivas, director of economic research for Realtor.com, said in the new report. “Our May hotness index further confirms we’re seeing that as prices in California continue to soar, people are increasingly looking elsewhere.

“As we continue into what we expect to be the hottest home-buying season in history, look for a wide variety of locales to remain red-hot.”

Other smoking home markets on Realtor.com’s list include Boston, Columbus and Buffalo, N.Y.

Odessa—another oil town—ranked 17th and Dallas-Fort Worth was in 19th place among the country’s 20 hot housing metros.

Realtor.com says that median home sales listing prices were up 8 percent year over year in May.

And nationwide 557,000 new hone listings hitting the market in May. That’s the largest number of new listings in one month since July 2015.