Best Markets To Wholesale Real Estate In 2026 (Scored & Ranked)

Written by

Alex Martinez — Founder & CEO, Real Estate Skills. Has wholesaled and flipped houses for over a decade, personally acquiring 33+ residential investment properties.

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Reviewed by

Ryan Zomorodi — Co-Founder & COO, Real Estate Skills. Reviewed and verified the market scoring methodology, data sources, and student results in this guide before publication.

✓ Updated July 2026 ✓ Fact-Checked 📄 Free State-by-State Guide Inside Watch on YouTube

Publication history: Originally published June 7, 2022. Updated July 2026 with an original scoring model ranking the 100 largest U.S. metros on foreclosure activity and 2026 growth forecasts, a rebuilt methodology, a new markets-to-approach-with-caution tier, a market-scoring framework readers can run themselves, and first-hand results from three Real Estate Skills students. Market data and student results verified by Ryan Zomorodi, Co-Founder & COO of Real Estate Skills.

Most "best markets" lists rank on home prices and population growth. That tells you where people are moving. It tells you nothing about whether you can get a property under contract and actually sell it.

Here's what kills more deals than bad negotiating. A wholesaler picks a market stacked with distressed inventory, locks up a property inside three weeks, and then spends the next two months trying to find someone to buy it. The seller side was easy. The buyer side didn't exist. One of our students had exactly that problem in Tampa — he could put a deal under contract every single month and couldn't move them.

That's not a skill problem. That's a market problem, and it's the one nobody's list warns you about.

So we scored the 100 largest metro areas in the country — a metro area, or MSA, is a city plus the surrounding counties that share its economy, so "Toledo" here means Toledo and the towns around it, not just the city limits. We scored each one on two things: how much distressed inventory it actually has, using ATTOM's June 2026 foreclosure data, and how likely a buyer is to close there, using Realtor.com's 2026 forecast for home sales and prices. Both halves, weighted the same, because a wholesale deal dies without either one.

The results surprised us in one specific way. The markets that look best on distress are mostly the worst on demand, and vice versa. Only a handful of metros are genuinely strong on both — and none of them are the ones dominating the headlines.

Below you'll get every metro scored and ranked, the ones we'd avoid and why, three real deals from our students in three different markets with the actual numbers, and the exact method so you can score any market yourself. You can download our free wholesale contracts here to have ready when you find your deal.

How We Scored The Best Markets To Wholesale Real Estate

Two questions decide whether a market can produce a wholesale deal.

Can you get a property under contract cheap enough to leave a spread? That takes motivated sellers — people with a real reason to sell fast and below market. Foreclosure activity is the cleanest public measure of that.

And can you hand that contract to someone who'll actually close? That takes buyer demand. When sales volume and prices are rising, investors buy. When both are falling, your phone stops ringing.

We weighted them equally. Not because it's tidy, but because a deal dies the same way whether you can't find the property or can't find the buyer. Neither side earns more weight than the other.

The distress side — ATTOM, June 2026. ATTOM's foreclosure data tracks default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions. In June 2026, 39,327 U.S. properties had a foreclosure filing — one in every 3,656 housing units, up 21% from a year earlier. Higher local rates mean more distressed inventory and more sellers with a reason to move.

The demand side — Realtor.com, 2026 forecast. Realtor.com's Top Housing Markets for 2026 projects combined growth in existing-home sales and prices across the 100 largest metros by household count. That combination matters more than price alone: rising prices with falling sales means a market where your buyer can't resell.

How the scoring works. Each metro gets a 0–100 score on each axis, scaled against the strongest and weakest in the set. Hartford has the highest projected growth in the country, so it scores 100 on demand. Florida has the nation's worst foreclosure rate, so its metros score 100 on distress. The two average into a composite. Higher is better; 50 is the middle of the field.

What This Score Doesn't Measure

Four things it can't see, and you should know all of them.

Foreclosure data is state-level for most metros. ATTOM publishes metro-level rates only for the hardest-hit markets — Punta Gorda at 0.50% of housing units and Lakeland at 0.48% in the first half of 2026, for example. Where we have the metro figure, we use it. Everywhere else, the metro inherits its state's rate, which means every Ohio metro carries Ohio's number even though Cleveland and Columbus aren't the same market.

One number is a forecast, the other is history. Realtor.com is projecting 2026. ATTOM is reporting what already happened. We're combining a prediction with a fact, and forecasts miss.

Nothing here sees a specific property. Liens, code violations, back taxes, a bedroom with no closet — none of that shows up in a metro score. One of our students watched a $10,000 assignment fee get cut in half by city violations on a single house in Columbus. The market scored fine. The property didn't.

It's a snapshot. Realtor.com's forecast published December 2025; ATTOM's foreclosure data covers June 2026. Both move. Confirm current figures before you commit to a market.

We'd rather show you the seams than hand you a number that looks more precise than it is.

100 Best Markets To Wholesale Real Estate In 2026, Ranked And Scored

Here's the full board. Distress score reflects motivated-seller supply, demand score reflects your odds of finding a buyer who closes, and the composite is the two averaged.

*ATTOM publishes a metro-specific foreclosure rate for these markets that runs well above their state average — Lakeland at 0.48% of housing units in the first half of 2026, Columbia at 0.43%, Cape Coral at 0.35%, Cleveland at 0.33%, and Jacksonville at 0.31%. Their distress scores here use the state figure for consistency across all markets, so treat these five as stronger on distress than the table shows. Washington, D.C. is excluded because ATTOM's state-level table does not cover it, leaving 99 scored metros.

Read the columns, not just the rank. A composite of 63 built from 87 distress and 40 demand is a completely different market from a 63 built from 33 and 94 — Indianapolis and Rochester score nearly identically and would ruin you in opposite ways.

Toledo is the one market that isn't a compromise. It has Ohio's foreclosure activity, eighth-worst among states in the first half of 2026, alongside the strongest projected price growth of any large metro in the country. Sellers with a reason to move, buyers with a reason to buy. That combination is rare enough that Toledo tops this list without leading either individual column.

Columbia, South Carolina is the one nobody's talking about. Its metro foreclosure rate ran 0.43% of housing units in the first half of 2026, third-worst in the nation, and Realtor.com still forecasts it in the top 20 for combined growth. Real distress in a market buyers haven't abandoned.

Hartford and Rochester are the mirror image. Best-forecast markets in America, and among the thinnest distressed inventory. Great markets to sell a house in. Hard markets to find one cheap.

Florida is the sharpest split on the board. Four Florida metros make the top 15 purely on distress — the state posted the nation's worst foreclosure rate in the first half of 2026 at 0.27% of housing units, roughly one in every 373 homes. And Florida metros fill the bottom of Realtor.com's growth forecast. You will find deals there. Have your buyer lined up before you sign anything.

Why The Best Wholesale Markets Are Rarely Good At Both

Put the two datasets side by side and a pattern shows up that neither one reveals alone.

Florida has the worst foreclosure rate in the country. It also has the weakest 2026 growth forecast of any state — Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, and Cape Coral all sit in the bottom fifteen of Realtor.com's 100 metros, with Cape Coral dead last.

Now flip it. Hartford, Rochester, and Worcester take the top three spots in that same forecast. Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts rank 29th, 31st, and 35th for foreclosure activity. Buyers are lining up in the markets where distressed sellers are scarcest.

That's the trade-off, and it's the thing to understand before you pick a market.

The Four Kinds Of Market

Which One You Want Depends On What You're Bad At

This is where a market score becomes actually useful rather than interesting.

If your cash buyer list is thin or nonexistent, a deal-rich market will punish you. You'll lock up properties you can't move, watch inspection periods run out, and conclude you're bad at wholesaling when you're actually just bad at disposition in a market that demands it.

If you're good at disposition — you've got five or six buyers who answer the phone and close — a deal-rich, buyer-poor market is arguably where your edge is worth the most. Everyone else there is drowning in the same problem you've already solved.

Buyer-rich markets flip the requirement. You need to find deals fast and price them right, because the obvious motivated-seller signals aren't there in volume.

And the strong-on-both markets are where a beginner should start, because neither side is the thing that kills you.

A Caution About Reading Too Much Into This

One month of foreclosure data against one forecast is a snapshot, not a law of physics. Foreclosure activity nationally is up 21% year over year and still well below historical norms, which means these positions can move. Ohio's advantage today isn't permanent, and Florida's demand problem may not last through the year.

What holds is the framework. Check both sides before you commit to a market, because a market that's only good at one is a market that will teach you an expensive lesson about the other.

10 Markets To Approach With Caution In 2026

Knowing where not to start matters as much as knowing where to start. These ten sit at the bottom of the same scoring model as the top of the list — same two axes, same weighting.

They get here two different ways.

Wichita and Seattle are demand-side markets with no distress. Washington has the sixth-lowest foreclosure rate in the country; Kansas is third-lowest. Whatever buyer activity exists, there's very little distressed inventory to feed it.

Denver, Allentown, and Memphis are the harder version — moderate distress paired with a genuinely negative growth forecast. Denver's projected combined sales and price growth is −6.3% for 2026. You'd be sourcing deals into a market where buyers are pulling back.

One honest correction: a low score is not a verdict on a market. It's a statement about starting conditions. Investors already operating in Denver with established buyer relationships have an advantage no score captures, and they'll keep closing deals there this year — one of our students averaged more than $19,000 a deal across seven Denver closings by building one strong cash-buyer relationship. If you have a real buyer network in one of these markets, that network matters more than this ranking.

But if you're choosing a market from scratch and you have the freedom to choose, pick one that isn't fighting you on both sides.

What Wholesalers Actually Earn Per Deal In These Markets

People search for the average wholesale fee in specific markets constantly. We're not going to invent one. Nobody publishes assignment fees by metro, and any site giving you a precise per-city number is guessing.

What we can give you is three real deals, closed in three different markets, with the actual numbers — including the part most case studies leave out.

Three markets. Three completely different causes. Same outcome every time.

The number you sign is not the number you collect. Something surfaces after you're under contract — the listing was wrong, the property carries debt nobody disclosed, the city wants its money first — and it comes out of your spread. Not the seller's price. Not the buyer's price. Yours, because you're the one with room to give.

Notice also that all three renegotiated rather than walked. Brayden used a square-footage discrepancy to reprice. Lee took $75,000 down to $56,000 after a real inspection. Nathan and his partner absorbed part of a shortfall to keep a seller from paying at closing. The fee compressed in all three cases, and all three closed.

What to do with this. Budget the gap. If you need $10,000 to make a deal worth doing, don't sign at exactly $10,000 of spread — you have no room for the thing you haven't found yet. And put real eyes on the property before your contingency expires. In all three deals, the listing data was wrong: square footage inflated by an indoor pool, damage the photos didn't show, a second bedroom with no closet after someone expanded the bathroom.

The contingency period exists for exactly this. Use it.

How To Score Any Wholesale Market Yourself In About 20 Minutes

The hundred metros above cover most of the country's population, but not all of it. If your market isn't on the list — or you want to check the town you already live in — here's the method, using the same two free sources we used.

Step 1: Check Distressed-Seller Supply

Go to ATTOM's foreclosure rates by state, updated monthly. Find your state and note two things: the rate, expressed as one filing per X housing units, and the four counties within your state that lead in foreclosure activity.

The national rate in June 2026 was one in every 3,656 housing units. Lower than that number means more distress than average. Florida ran one in 2,106; Vermont, one in 24,217.

The county list matters more than the state figure. Distress concentrates. Your state's rate is an average that hides enormous variation between the county with an active foreclosure pipeline and the county next door with none. If one of your target counties appears on that list, that's a stronger signal than your state's overall rank.

Step 2: Check Buyer Demand

Open Realtor.com's 2026 housing market forecast and find your metro in the 100-market table. You want the combined figure — sales growth plus price growth.

Positive combined growth means buyers are active and prices are holding, so your end buyer has a market to resell or rent into. Negative means the opposite, and it's the number that quietly kills deals: you can source a property beautifully into a market where nobody wants to buy it.

If your metro isn't in the top 100, use the nearest one that is. Housing markets don't respect city limits, and a metro 40 minutes away is usually a reasonable proxy.

Step 3: Read The Combination, Not Either Number

This is the step people skip, and it's the whole point.

• Strong distress, weak demand — your bottleneck will be finding buyers. Build the buyer list first. Do not go under contract on anything until you have three or four people who've told you what they'd buy and at what price.
• Weak distress, strong demand — your bottleneck is finding deals. Expect to send far more offers per contract, and get sharp at comping, because the obvious motivated-seller signals aren't there in volume.
• Strong on both — start here if you have the choice. Neither side is the thing that stops you.
• Weak on both — workable if you already have relationships there. A hard place to begin from scratch.

Step 4: Verify With One Thing The Data Can't Tell You

Both signals above are public and free. Neither answers the question that actually determines whether you'll close: do you know anyone who buys houses in this market?

A market scoring 77 is worth nothing to you without a buyer. A market scoring 40 works fine if you've got two investors who close reliably. Every deal in this article came down to the buyer side — the student who could source monthly but couldn't sell, the one whose institutional partner brought three buyers before one funded.

So run the data to find structurally sound markets, then pick the one where you can actually reach buyers. That order. Not the reverse.

Now do the same for your market.

What Is Virtual Wholesaling Real Estate & HOW Does It Work?

Scored a market you don't live in? This breaks down how virtual wholesaling actually works — finding and analyzing properties remotely, lining up local cash buyers, and closing without ever visiting the property.

 

Your Market Scored Well. Now Check What's Legal There.

This scoring model measures opportunity, not legality — and those aren't the same thing. Several of the highest-scoring markets on this list sit in states that have added disclosure requirements, licensing thresholds, or limits on how you can market a property you don't own. A metro can rank first on distress and demand and still have rules that change how you structure the deal. Our free state-by-state guide breaks down how wholesaling works legally across the country, so you can take any market from this list and know exactly what applies before you sign anything. Always confirm the specifics with a licensed real estate attorney in your market.

Best Markets To Wholesale Real Estate FAQs

Final Thoughts On The Best Markets To Wholesale Real Estate

The honest summary of a hundred scored markets is this: almost none of them are good at both halves of the job.

Toledo is. Columbia, South Carolina is. Akron, Dayton, and Winston-Salem come close. Past that, you're choosing which problem you'd rather have — a market full of distressed sellers where your contract may sit, or a market full of ready buyers where finding the property is the grind.

That choice is more useful than a ranking. A market scoring 77 means nothing if your weakness is disposition and you've walked into the most deal-rich market in Florida. A market scoring 45 works fine if you've got four buyers who answer the phone.

Look at what actually happened to our students. Brayden could put a property under contract in the Tampa metro every month and couldn't move them — a textbook deal-rich, buyer-poor problem, and he solved it by partnering with someone who had the buyer side covered. Nathan's turnkey properties in San Antonio needed buy-and-hold investors, and those buyers still wanted flipper pricing. Lee found genuine distress in Columbus and watched the city take half his fee. Three markets, three entirely different obstacles, none of them visible in a market score.

That's not an argument against scoring markets. It's an argument for knowing what the score can't tell you before you rely on it.

So here's what I'd actually do. Run your market through the two signals — foreclosure activity for supply, forecast growth for demand. Figure out which side is weak. Then fix that side before you go under contract on anything, because every deal in this article that got harder got harder on the side the wholesaler hadn't prepared for.

And expect the number to move. All three of these deals came in below what the wholesaler signed for, because something surfaced after the contract that nobody had priced in. Build room for that. If you need $10,000 to make a deal worth doing, don't sign at exactly $10,000.

The markets will keep shifting. Ohio's advantage isn't permanent and Florida's demand problem may not last the year. What doesn't shift is the framework: check both sides, cover your weakness, and leave yourself room. Do that and the market you pick matters a lot less than the fact that you picked one and learned it properly.

About The Author

Alex Martinez

Founder & CEO, Real Estate Skills

Alex Martinez is the Founder and CEO of Real Estate Skills. With more than a decade of investing experience and 33+ residential properties acquired, he has personally wholesaled and flipped houses across the country. Through Real Estate Skills, Alex and his team have helped thousands of students learn how to find deals, choose the right markets, and close profitable real estate transactions.

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Real Estate Skills is not a law firm, and the information in this article is provided for educational purposes only — it does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Wholesaling laws and requirements vary by state and change over time. Market data cited here reflects the most recent figures available at the time of writing — Realtor.com's 2026 housing forecast published December 2025 and ATTOM foreclosure data through June 2026 — and market conditions change; verify current figures before acting on them. Real estate investing carries risk, and individual results, including the student results described here, are not typical and do not guarantee future outcomes. Always consult a licensed real estate attorney and your own tax and financial advisors before entering into any contract or transaction.