Hottest Second Home Markets Might Just Surprise You

April 6, 2019 | Bethany Erickson | | Second Shelters

Hawaii? Nope. California? Nope. Florida? Nope. Where is the hottest second home market in the U.S.? Ocean City, New Jersey.

According to an analysis of second home purchases by SmartAsset, Ocean City rose to the top of the list thanks to a whopping 79.38 percent of its mortgages were for secondary residences. The coastal town has 2,865 mortgages for second homes and 744 for primary residences.

For comparison’s sake, the next closest city on the list, Salisbury, Maryland, had 54 percent of its mortgages going to second homes.

And areas you’d think might be at the top like Destin, Florida or Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, Hawaii had a mere 53 percent and 45 percent, respectively.

“To complete our rankings, we compared two metrics: the total number of home purchases and the number of home purchases made for non-primary residences,” SmartAsset said.

How did Texas fare? Who else made the list? Head over to SecondShelters.com to find out.

Posted in Second Shelters

Bethany Erickson

Bethany Erickson lives in a 1961 Fox and Jacobs home with her husband, a second-grader, and Conrad Bain the dog. If she won the lottery, she'd by an E. Faye Jones home.
She's taken home a few awards for her writing, including a Gold award for Best Series at the 2018 National Association of Real Estate Editors journalism awards, a 2018 Hugh Aynesworth Award for Editorial Opinion from the Dallas Press Club, and a 2019 award from NAREE for a piece linking Medicaid expansion with housing insecurity.
She is a member of the Online News Association, the Education Writers Association, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
She doesn't like lima beans or the word moist.