Home price in rural US outpacing urban areas with massive increases

After decades of young professionals flocking to large metros in search of well-paying jobs and lifestyle amenities, the American heartland is seeing a resurgence, with rural counties posting massive home price increases far outpacing those in urban centers.

From November 2019 to November 2025, nonmetro counties, which are synonymous with rural locales, experienced a median listing price increase exceeding 70%, while in-metro counties saw home prices rise just over 30%, according to a new housing data analysis from Realtor.com®.

But a closer look at the numbers reveals that some outlying areas—all tellingly concentrated in the budget-friendly Midwest and South—outperformed others by significant margins.

Blackford County, Indiana’s fourth-smallest county with a population of under 12,000 people, now ranks first in nonmetro home price growth.

In November 2019, just months before the outbreak of COVID, the typical home in Blackford cost just under $56,000. Last month, the median asking price in the area was nearly $156,000, representing a staggering 186% increase from six years ago. 

Those figures were calculated at the listing level across all the counties in the rural and metro categories over the last six years.

For context, Blackford County’s housing market remains highly affordable, with the listing price roughly one-third of the U.S. median of $415,000 in November, according to the latest monthly housing market trends report from Realtor.com.

Lauderdale County, nestled in the rolling hills of southwestern Tennessee and bordering the Mississippi River, saw the second-largest gain in home prices of nearly 160%, with the typical for-sale property there listed for $215,000 last month, up from just $83,000 in 2019. 

Amanda Crist, a real estate agent at Ragan’s Five Rivers Realty & Auction Co. in Dickson, TN, says the primary driver behind soaring homes prices in rural parts of the state is a massive influx of newcomers drawn by Tennessee’s lack of a state income tax and strong job market.

“While some new residents have moved to large cities including Nashville, many others have moved to the surrounding more rural counties either because of more affordable prices, more square footage, less traffic, more land, or some mixture of these reasons, depending on each specific buyer’s needs,” she tells Realtor.com.

Rush County, IN, came in third, with a 158% increase in median list prices over six years, followed by Fountain County, IN, at 151%, with Mitchell County, IA, landing in the fifth spot with 148% growth. 

As a recent working paper from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies explains, during the pandemic years, rural areas saw an inflow of transplants from larger, often more expensive metros as the rise of remote work allowed them to shop for homes further afield.

“As a result, net domestic migration—an important driver of housing demand—turned positive in nonmetro counties for the first time in at least a decade,” write the paper’s authors, senior research associate Alexander Hermann and research analyst Peyton Whitney.

According to the study, during the three years preceding the pandemic, rural locations saw a net loss of nearly 78,000 residents, but between 2021 and 2023, that trend made a sharp U-turn, with 540,000 people relocating to rural communities. 

Unsurprisingly, this tidal wave of migration dramatically pushed up home prices in once ultra-affordable areas, often putting local buyers with more modest incomes at a disadvantage.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that rural workers made less than 85% of urban workers’ earnings in August 2025, which was almost the same as in August 2019. 

“Small town living is an appealing proposition to city dwellers, many of whom are choosing to leave big cities in favor of these nonmetro counties to buy a home if they have the flexibility to do so, which drives up prices in rural counties at the expense of those already there who may no longer be able to afford a home,” says Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner. “Often these rural counties have a less robust rental market, so options for people living there are getting thin.”

Vacation destinations take a back seat

Notably, none of the top-ranked rural counties have more than 5% of loans tied to nonprimary residences, signaling that vacation homes are uncommon in these off-the-beaten-path areas with little name recognition.

Although the Joint Center for Housing Studies’ paper found that rural counties with high shares of vacation and second homes saw housing prices jump nearly 48% from 2020 to 2023 compared with other areas, the Realtor.com analysis shows that even rural counties not catering to tourists have experienced tremendous home appreciation.

Among the top 50 nonmetro counties that saw the highest levels of price growth, Valley County, ID, known for its breathtaking mountains and lakes popular among outdoor enthusiasts, stands out for boasting the highest share of vacation or second homes, at 62%.

The next closest area is Bear Lake County, also in Idaho, where roughly 42% of home loans were connected to nonprimary residences. 

“While some of this out-of-metro growth can be explained by vacation destination counties like Valley County, where the median listing price grew 121.3% from $399,900 to $884,950, more of the growth comes from truly rural counties with low median prices like these ones,” says Berner.

The economist argues that affordability, rather than a county’s appeal as a vacation destination, makes all the difference, and Crist agrees.

“For many buyers, affordability in rural areas is the difference between owning a home and not owning a home,” says the agent. “Especially with higher interest rates in the past few years, the ability to buy in a housing market that has not seen a significant reduction in housing prices has pushed a lot of buyers out of the city centers.”

Rural counties outperform urban ones

On the other side of the spectrum, some of the nation’s largest, priciest, and most populous urban counties saw far more modest price gains from November 2019 to November 2025.

In Orange County, CA—the sixth-largest county in the U.S. by population—the median list price increased 55% over six years, with the typical home there costing $1.27 million as of last month. 

Maricopa County, AZ, came in second in growth, at 44%, followed by Miami-Dade, FL, at 40.5%.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County, the largest in the U.S. by population with over 10 million residents, experienced a home price growth of just over 34%. 

At the bottom of the ranking, Kings County, NY—home to Brooklyn—has seen listing prices stagnate since 2019, with the typical asking price rising by just $999.

“The most affordable homes in the country, the rural ones, are becoming more expensive at a rate faster than already-expensive urban ones,” confirms Berner.