MW These two Rust Belt cities have the fastest-growing home prices in America

By Aarthi Swaminathan

These havens of affordability are luring home buyers, including New Yorkers making all-cash offers

Home prices have been falling in some parts of the country, but two metropolitan areas in the Northeast are bucking that trend.

A previous version of this story incorrectly cited a statistic provided by Syracuse real-estate agent James Burnham.

Here's a puzzle: Name two Rust Belt cities with ties to Joe Biden where home prices are going up faster than in most other American cities.

The answer: Scranton, Pa., and Syracuse, N.Y., according to new data from Intercontinental Exchange $(ICE)$.

These two cities, both former manufacturing hubs, saw faster annual home-price growth than 98 other U.S. metropolitan areas in September. Coincidentally, Joe Biden, the former president who represented Delaware for decades in the U.S. Senate, was born in Scranton and went to law school at Syracuse University.

The growth in home prices in Scranton and Syracuse is at odds with what's happening in the rest of the residential real-estate market.

Home sales nationally have been stagnant. The housing market remains prohibitively expensive for many buyers, alongside mortgage rates that remain elevated. In response, buyers have pulled back, and home prices have been falling sharply in some parts of the country.

But urban areas in northeastern states continue to enjoy strong home-price appreciation, as buyer demand has yet to fall off. Buyers are still competing with other bidders for a small pool of homes, keeping the region competitive - even as the housing market remains historically unaffordable.

Home prices in Syracuse grew 10.2% between mid-September 2024 and mid-September 2025, putting the metropolitan area at the top of the list of the 100 largest metro areas in America, according to data from Intercontinental Exchange.

In Scranton, home prices grew 7.9% over the same period, which put that metro area in second place.

Meanwhile, home prices fared worst in Sun Belt areas that were pandemic-era darlings. Cape Coral, Fla., was the worst housing market in America in September, with home prices down 8.8% in mid-September from a year earlier.

Why are prices going up so much in Syracuse and Scranton? Real-estate agents attributed the jump to the relative affordability of homes in those areas.

'Salt City' sees biggest growth in home prices

Some five hours by car or train north of New York City, Syracuse is home to multiple educational institutions, including Syracuse University and Le Moyne College.

Syracuse is dubbed the "Salt City" due to its role in salt production in the 19th century. The city, which has a population of about 145,000, will soon be home to a semiconductor-manufacturing complex, thanks to a $100 billion investment from Micron Technology $(MU)$.

"We're not seeing a ton of job creation from that yet," James Burnham, a Syracuse-based real-estate agent with Coldwell Banker Prime Properties, told MarketWatch. But he expects the facility to provide a tailwind for the local economy.

From the archives (April 2024): Biden hails Micron chip factories, pitching Syracuse voters on American 'comeback'

Despite the recent price growth, aspiring buyers in Syracuse are still likely to find reasonable home prices. "We have been a very affordable housing market for many years," Burnham noted.

The median home price in Syracuse as of August was about $270,000, according to a monthly report by the Greater Syracuse Association of Realtors. Prices were up 8.2% from the same month a year before.

In contrast, the national median home price was about $423,000, according to the National Association of Realtors.

What's driving up prices in Syracuse? "A lot of it is competition," Burnham said. "We're getting five, 10, sometimes 20 offers on a home."

Lower-end buyers are getting "desperate," he said, and in some cases they're agreeing to increase their offer prices based on competing bids.

Burnham estimated that the final sale price for the 60 homes he helped sell in 2024 averaged 14% over list price. In August 2025, 20% of homes nationally sold over their list price, according to the Realtors group. "Most of these homes are going into a bidding war and going significantly over asking," he added.

Aspiring Syracuse homeowners with a budget of $275,000 can, in general, expect to find older homes that are mostly under 2,000 square feet, the real-estate agent advised. Homes in the city of Syracuse itself are often more than 100 years old, but there are significantly newer houses available in the suburbs.

A perk of living in Syracuse - despite its reputation for hard winters and as one of the snowiest places in America - is its relative stability when it comes to other weather elements.

"We don't have a lot of natural disasters. We get cold and we get snow, but we don't experience hurricanes or earthquakes or tornadoes or wildfires," Burnham said.

'Electric City' ranks second in home-price appreciation

Over 100 miles south of Syracuse is the second-strongest housing market in America.

Just two hours by car northwest of New York City, Scranton is probably best known as the setting for the U.S. version of the popular television series "The Office."

Scranton's nickname, "Electric City," stems from its being one of the first places in the U.S. to have electric streetcars. Scranton was a pivotal player in America's Industrial Revolution, with its steel furnaces producing rails for the railroads.

Many home buyers - including aspiring homeowners from New Jersey and New York - are drawn to Scranton because of its roughly equal proximity to New York City and Philadelphia, affordable home prices and relatively low property taxes, Dan Taylor, a Pennsylvania-based real-estate agent at Keller Williams, told MarketWatch. Taylor previously served as president of the Greater Scranton Board of Realtors.

The median listing price in Scranton as of August was about $200,000, according to real-estate platform Zillow (Z) - with the average home in Scranton valued 9.7% higher at the end of August as compared with a year earlier.

All-cash buyers from outside Scranton are one factor behind the rising prices, Taylor said. Even when a property is listed at $200,000, out-of-town cash buyers are offering $10,000 or $15,000 over the asking price, to the detriment of local buyers. "Cash is king, and New York and New Jersey bring it," he said.

About one-fifth of home-sale transactions in Scranton are now all-cash - a marked increase from prepandemic levels, Taylor noted. Before 2020, only about 6% to 8% of transactions were all-cash.

Similar to buyers targeting Syracuse, Scranton's aspiring homeowners with a $200,000 budget can expect century-old homes of between 2,000 and 2,500 square feet, the real-estate agent said. Many homes in Scranton were built in the 1800s and have stone foundations.

The biggest potential perk for buyers choosing to live in Scranton - aside from low prices - is the relatively low property taxes. Pennsylvania has a 1.41% average effective property-tax rate, according to SmartAsset.

That's significantly lower than the 1.64% effective rate in New York and the 2.33% rate in New Jersey.

Weston Blasi contributed.

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-Aarthi Swaminathan

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October 14, 2025 14:18 ET (18:18 GMT)

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