The American dream of owning a home may be getting harder to achieve in some of the country's biggest cities, but new data suggests it remains alive and well in parts of Texas and the Sun Belt.

According to the 2026 Best Real Estate Markets report released Wednesday by personal-finance site WalletHub, Frisco, Texas, took the top spot and was followed by neighboring McKinney, Texas. Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Durham, North Carolina; and Denton, Texas, rounded out the top five.

Other cities in the top 10 include Cary, North Carolina; Madison, Wisconsin; Allen, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Irvine, California.

The top tier skews heavily toward suburbs of major metros rather than urban cores: Frisco, McKinney, Denton and Allen all sit in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Murfreesboro lies outside Nashville, and Cary and Durham are part of North Carolina's Research Triangle region.

"Texas and other Sun Belt markets dominate the top of the ranking, highlighting the combination of housing-market strength and helpful economic conditions found in many of these cities," WalletHub writer and analyst Chip Lupo told Fox News Digital. "These markets tend to perform well across factors such as home-price appreciation, new housing construction, building-permit activity, affordability and job growth."

"Nearly 47% of the housing units in Frisco, the No. 1 market overall, were built between 2010 and 2024 … McKinney, ranked No. 2, has a 40% new-home rate, the 10th-highest building-permit activity and one of the best job growth rates," Lupo said.

That Sun Belt tilt tracks broader population trends: U.S. Census Bureau estimates have shown the South accounting for the largest share of the nation's population growth in recent years, and the top of WalletHub's ranking skews heavily toward that region.

By comparison, many large coastal markets ranked much lower overall, including New York at No. 231, Los Angeles at No. 237 and San Francisco at No. 273. Lupo said their weaker rankings reflect a combination of housing-market challenges and poor affordability and economic-environment scores.

The study weighs underlying housing-market health and market trajectory more heavily than affordability alone in its annual ranking of 300 U.S. cities. To rank highly, cities need a combination of healthy housing fundamentals and economic conditions that could support homeowners over the longer term.

"Taxes are certainly part of the equation, but the ranking points more broadly to the combination of housing conditions and economic strength rather than taxes alone," Lupo said. Texas and Tennessee, which together account for five of the top 10 cities, are among the states that levy no state income tax.

"By contrast, major coastal markets rank far lower. Those markets may offer high incomes and economic opportunity, but their housing costs can make it much harder for residents to translate those opportunities into homeownership. The biggest, most popular cities are on everyone's radar," he said, "so their housing markets have been competitive for a long time, and they continue to be. The entry point is therefore more expensive, and there might not be as much room for growth."

"The contrast with expensive coastal cities is less about simply building more homes and more about whether housing supply can keep pace with demand. When new construction consistently falls behind population and job growth, affordability pressures become much harder to overcome," Lupo said.

New Orleans ranked last in the report, followed by Baltimore. Lupo said that result is a "warning sign" that goes beyond home prices.

"Homeowners shouldn’t assume further deterioration is inevitable, but these rankings are a reason to be cautious," he said. "Markets with weak housing fundamentals can experience slower home-price growth, weaker market activity and greater difficulty attracting buyers, which can make it harder for homeowners to build equity or sell quickly."