Some neighborhoods always draw a crowd. Realtor.com's ranking of the most in-demand ZIP codes for the first half of 2026 starts with Peabody, Massachusetts.
The ranking uses listing views and how quickly homes sell, and Peabody's median listing price is $600,000, below many of the wealthier North Shore communities around it. As a result, Peabody is the only 2026 top-ten ZIP whose typical asking price sits below the surrounding metro's median.
Peabody last appeared at No. 3 in 2021, and the remaining nine ZIPs all carry price tags above their metro averages, with eight also offering more square footage.
Here are the ten ZIP codes, with each one's median listing price and how many times more views the typical property gets compared with the average U.S. home:
Most of these are suburbs or smaller towns that give buyers extra space and an easy drive to a city. Sewell sits under 20 miles from Philadelphia, New Berlin is about 15 miles west of Milwaukee, Fairport is outside Rochester, and North Haven is near New Haven.
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Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com, says that's partly because those regions have built fewer homes, and less supply makes each listing more competitive.
"The list has really migrated from being bang for your buck, more affordable ZIP-code focused to established neighborhoods that offer value but tend to be higher price," she says. Southern and Western markets have built more homes, which spreads demand around and, Jones said, "thins out that demand per property."
The count of homes listed for sale in these ten ZIPs is 60.5% below pre-pandemic levels.
Nationwide, the drop is just 11.3%. That gap helps explain why the competition in these towns is so intense.
Realtor.com's first-half list has now been dominated by the Northeast and Midwest for four straight years. The ranking is based on listing views and how quickly homes sell, so the hottest ZIPs are places where buyer interest is unusually concentrated. That concentration is why a typical listing in Peabody, for example, gets 4.09 times the views of the average U.S. home.
Jones says that profile fits older repeat buyers who use the wealth built up in a current home to fund the next one.
"It's really these extremely financially prepared buyers who are shopping in these higher-priced areas because they can compete," she says.
If you're searching in one of these ZIPs, you're up against a smaller supply of homes and a deep-pocketed group of buyers. That doesn't mean the door is closed, but the money side of an offer will probably decide the outcome, and a prepared buyer has a real chance.
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