Where We’d Invest in Real Estate Right Now (9 Markets)

When the market shifts, the map of opportunity changes

Late 2025 looks less like a single housing story and more like a patchwork of local narratives. Some cities have become battlegrounds for buyers and sellers, others quietly stack infrastructure bets that could reshape regional economies, and a few still offer the old-fashioned investor bread-and-butter: cash flow. Three real estate pros examined the data and returned with a list of nine U.S. markets that illustrate how different strategies—protecting downside, hunting appreciation, or prioritizing immediate cash flow—play out across neighborhoods and metros.

Affordability with momentum: South Carolina and the Carolinas' quiet pull

Columbia, South Carolina, appears like the kind of market that whispers rather than shouts. Median home prices near $250,000 paired with median rents around $1,623 give investors a rent-to-price relationship that supports potential cash flow if properties are purchased below median. Low vacancies, sub-4.1% unemployment, landlord-friendly state law, and relatively modest taxes and insurance costs round out a profile that favors steady stewardship over speculative flipping. The city is also staging a modest downtown revival—public dollars and university-backed innovation districts hint at incremental job growth and sustained demand.

Greenville's steady appreciation

Greenville sits on the other end of the South Carolina spectrum: slightly higher median values near $340,000 but consistent rent growth around $1,700–$1,750 and annual rental appreciation in the low single digits. For an investor hunting slow, dependable appreciation rather than a windfall, Greenville’s proximity to coastal amenities without the premium insurance burdens makes it a compelling middling bet—less glamour than the big Sun Belt boom towns, but less volatility too.

Midwest stability and big bets: Des Moines, Cincinnati, and Louisville

The Midwest keeps reasserting itself as a defensive playbook for investors who prize downside protection. Des Moines was singled out for its unusually large public and private commitment to downtown—roughly $3 billion in projects—and population growth that outpaced many Midwestern peers. Prices have been relatively flat, a feature rather than a bug for buyers who want negotiating power and steady rents without bidding wars. Flat pricing plus rising inventory creates room for disciplined investors to source deals at terms that improve long-term returns.

Cincinnati and nearby Louisville offer another flavor of Midwest opportunity. Cincinnati’s median home price around $272,000 against median rents near $1,868 creates a rare 0.69 rent-to-price dynamic in a major metro—practical cash flow for investors unwilling to go rural. The city’s public reinvestment—hundreds of millions for stadium and downtown projects—helps anchor the argument that urban cores can still convert local pride into economic stability. Louisville, slightly cheaper and responsible for a significant share of its state’s GDP, supplies the same regional pull with an extra dash of cultural cachet.

Suburban satellites and the power of spillover: North Dallas and Greensboro

The challenge of high-priced primary metros is pushing buyers into satellite suburbs where land is cheaper but demand is rising. McKinney, Texas, and its neighboring towns—Princeton, Little Elm, and Lavon—are textbook satellite plays. Massive public- and private-sector investments, including a $1.5 billion development in McKinney, have accelerated population growth in outlying exurbs, with some suburbs doubling in a matter of years. Investors who study commuting corridors, school quality, and amenity clusters can buy into middle-income households that want the lifestyle of a major metro without the central-city price tag.

Greensboro, North Carolina, illustrates a different kind of spillover. Median prices near $251,000 and rents around $1,600 make the city a candidate for both immediate cash flow and future appreciation, particularly because of its geographic relationship to Raleigh and Charlotte. A major aerospace manufacturing and R&D plan—a multibillion-dollar airport-related investment promising thousands of jobs—adds a concrete catalyst that could convert today’s renters into tomorrow’s homeowners and tighten the rental market.

Northeast exception and the trade-offs of cash flow markets

Hartford, Connecticut, is an outlier on this list: not cheap by national standards, with median home values roughly at the national average, but offering an affordability alternative to Boston and New York. For those priced out of the behemoth metros, Hartford provides proximity to high-wage job markets without the same housing premium, which can translate into steady tenant demand and incremental price gains as commuters seek more livable, reasonably priced options.

At the other end of the spectrum is Toledo, Ohio—an archetypal cash-flow market with median prices below $200,000 and rents around $1,400. The math can look attractive in gross rent-to-price terms, but a lack of sustained population and job growth means investors are largely buying today’s income rather than tomorrow’s appreciation. For a new investor who wants to bootstrap a portfolio, a place like Toledo can work as a training ground. For those who need growth engines to compound wealth, the case is thin unless new employers or significant public investments are already committed.

How to choose among these nine options

• Clarify your goal: immediate cash flow or longer-term appreciation with downside protection.
• Check catalysts: public infrastructure, corporate commitments, and university partnerships often precede measurable housing demand shifts.
• Consider landlord-friendly rules: regulatory environments and taxes alter operating margins more than a single percentage point on yield calculations.
• Study micro-markets: satellite suburbs and neighborhoods within metros grow unevenly; zip-code-level trends matter.

Markets change at different speeds. What ties the nine choices together is the same investor-oriented logic: marry local fundamentals—jobs, population, landlord laws, and taxes—with an honest understanding of what you need the asset to do for you. For some buyers that is steady cash flow and a conservative horizon; for others, it is catching the next wave of suburban growth or capitalizing on towns where public investment lays the groundwork for tens of thousands of new jobs. Few places promise all of it. Those that come closest usually combine affordability, rising rents, and visible infrastructure bets.

A closing thought on portfolio posture

There is no universal best market, only better fits for particular strategies. A market that looks sleepy can be a powerful engine for a patient owner-operator, while a city that is reinventing its downtown can be the seed of a multi-decade appreciation story. Intelligent investors pick a posture—defensive, growth-oriented, or income-first—and then use local data and on-the-ground verification to choose where that posture will work best. The quieter, less glamorous corners of the map are not failures; they are choices that reward discipline and a longer view of wealth creation.

Reflection

Markets will always be noisy and contradictory. The investor’s edge begins with deciding which noise to tune out and which to meet with capital, patience, and a clear plan for how the property should perform.