ALLENTOWN, Pa. — As 2024 winds down, the Lehigh Valley’s housing market remains on fire, with one city boasting a crowning achievement to close out the year.
Allentown has been named as one of the most popular housing markets in the country, reinforcing the Lehigh Valley’s presence on the biggest online real estate listing websites.
Zillow released its 2024 list of the Top 10 most popular markets, ranking Allentown at No. 6, while another “Queen City” — Manchester, New Hampshire — topped the list.
It comes just a few weeks after the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton metro area ranked as the country’s 19th-hottest market on Realtor.com in November, a double-digit leap after ranking 30th in October.
The Lehigh Valley also ranked among the nation’s hottest housing markets for 2025, according to the annual forecast for the nation's 100 largest metro areas released each year by the California-based online real estate service.
Northeast dominates
The Northeast dominated Zillow’s list for the second consecutive year, with the Top 10 listed as:
- Manchester, New Hampshire
- Rockford, Illinois
- Stamford, Connecticut
- Columbia, Maryland
- Bridgeport, Connecticut
- Allentown, Pennsylvania
- Peoria, Illinois
- New Haven, Connecticut
- Waterbury, Connecticut
- Sunnyvale, California
To cultivate the list, Zillow said it analyzed housing metrics in cities across the United States that reflect consumer demand, including page-view traffic, home value growth and how quickly homes sell.
Zillow said the average Allentown home value was $285,683, up 6.3% over the past year, with homes going to "pending" in about 12 days.
The data was reflective of the market through Nov. 30, Zillow said.
Elizabethtown, just south of Harrisburg and about a 90-minute drive from Allentown, was named as Zillow’s most popular small town of 2024.
The Lehigh Valley in high demand
Macungie, an exurb of Allentown, enjoyed its time in the spotlight back in August when it ranked among the hottest ZIP codes in America.
Realtor.com unveiled its Hottest ZIP Codes list — as it has done every year since 2017 — to showcase the top markets attractive to homebuyers looking for a combination of value and desirability.
Macungie ranked 10th, with an average of 2.7 times the page views per property vs. other ZIP codes across the country, with homes spending just 16 days on the market.
“It’s always special for any region to be nominated in that light — a desirable area to live,” Macungie Borough Manager John Brown told LehighValleyNews.com when the list came out.
“We’ve seen a lot of development and population moving into the area for the very reasons they cited. It’s a small community feel but you have access to all you really want access to — shopping, good school districts and moderate taxes."
