01Executive summary

This report ranks every American county of 50,000+ residents (1,002 of them) and every permitting city (12,674) on the four things that decide a residential development: who is arriving, what is being permitted, what homes sell for, and whether the schools are pulling families in. It ends with a one-page profile of the top 100 markets and a full ranked index of the rest.

1.43M
Units permitted, 2025: $332,700
U.S. median home value: 4.1
Value-to-income, national: 10.2M
New residents, 2020–2025

Seven findings organize the report. First, demand is exurban: the fastest-growing qualifying counties are overwhelmingly the second and third rings of Sun Belt metros, led by Kaufman County, TX at +42.2% since 2020. Second, the multifamily correction is real but localized: national 5+ unit permits fell 30.6% from the 2022 peak to 2024, while single-family permitting in 2025 stands -18.2% versus 2021. Third, the best per-capita permitting is in cities most national league tables never mention; the leader issues permits at 134.0 units per 1,000 residents. Fourth, a band of growing counties is barely building: the most underbuilt qualifying county permitted 0.01 homes per net new resident over 2022–2025.

Fifth, price momentum has rotated: the counties with the strongest five-year price growth are no longer the 2021 boomtowns, and several former leaders have gone flat. Sixth, school enrollment is the cleanest leading indicator of family demand in the data; where K-12 enrollment grows against a shrinking national trend, single-family absorption follows. Seventh, the Development Opportunity Index's top markets combine growth with restraint: fast arrival counts, moderate permitting, and value-to-income ratios the local buyer pool can still clear.

Opportunity Index leaders

1Jackson County, GA65.2
2Chambers County, TX65.1
3Rockwall County, TX64.9
4Loudon County, TN64.5
5Parker County, TX64.1

Fastest-growing counties

1Kaufman County, TX+42.2%
2Liberty County, TX+31.2%
3Jackson County, GA+29.3%
4Rockwall County, TX+28.9%
5Comal County, TX+27.8%

Top per-capita permitting cities

1North Port, FL134.0
2Kyle, TX125.3
3Georgetown, TX124.9
4Maricopa, AZ118.5
5Buckeye, AZ118.3

The report's working thesis: the winning acquisition strategy for 2027 is not chasing the counties everyone can name. It is the adjacent county with the same migration inflow, a fraction of the permitting competition, and a school system whose enrollment is growing. The index in section 13 exists to find exactly those.

Those markets, mapped. The ten below lead the Development Opportunity Index of section 13, which scores all 1,002 qualifying counties on seven equally weighted pillars; the full ranking, every pillar score and a one-page profile of each of the top hundred follow later in the report.

The ten highest-scoring markets on the Development Opportunity Index. Dot size follows rank, not size of market.

#	Market	Index	Growth '20–'25	Units / 1K	Median sale
1	Jackson County, GA	65.2	+29.3%	94.6	$423,749
2	Chambers County, TX	65.1	+22.6%	49.5	$375,191
3	Rockwall County, TX	64.9	+28.9%	63.8	$474,696
4	Loudon County, TN	64.5	+15.6%	48.8	$610,777
5	Parker County, TX	64.1	+23.5%	13.0	$473,664
6	Wise County, TX	64.1	+21.5%	20.4	$358,987
7	Liberty County, TX	64.0	+31.2%	51.2	$274,216
8	Ellis County, TX	63.7	+24.0%	57.9	$414,830
9	Hunt County, TX	63.3	+23.0%	34.4	$273,728
10	Kendall County, TX	63.2	+19.6%	30.8	$580,512

The top ten of 1,002 qualifying counties. Section 13 ranks the rest and publishes every pillar score behind these numbers.

02The national supply cycle

The structure mix is the cycle. Single-family permits collapsed in 2022–23 under rate pressure and have since recovered; 5+ unit permits peaked in 2022 as the pandemic-era pipeline delivered, then corrected hard. The 2025 mix (63.8% single-family, 32.4% in 5+ unit buildings) is the closest thing to a post-pandemic normal the data offers, and it is the backdrop every county figure in this report sits against.

U.S. housing units permitted per year by structure type, 2019–2025. Census Building Permits Survey, summed from the state files (complete at state grain for the full window).

627K
5+ unit permits at the 2022 peak: 435K
5+ unit permits, 2024: 909K
Single-family permits, 2025

For a developer the cycle chart is a sequencing signal: multifamily starts clear the market roughly two years after permits, so the 2024–25 permit trough becomes the 2026–27 delivery trough. Markets that kept permitting through the correction (section 11) will meet that trough with product; the ones that stopped will meet it with rent spikes.

15 more sections in the full report

Where demand is going
The fifty counties absorbing the country's population growth.
The permitting counties
Where permitting is most intense, per 1,000 residents.
The permitting cities
Top cities by permits, absolute and per capita, with structure mix.
Single-family versus multifamily
Where apartments dominate the pipeline and where detached still rules.
The price map
Home values and sale prices against the incomes that carry them.
Price momentum
Five-year county price growth: what has run and what has gone flat.
Schools and family demand
A family-demand signal from enrollment, class size and school poverty.
The Underbuilt 50
The signature list: fewest homes permitted per new resident.
Permit momentum
Counties accelerating into the cycle, and those pulling back.
Affordability headroom
Value-to-income by county: where the local buyer still clears the price.
The Development Opportunity Index
Seven pillars, equal weight, every score published.
The thirty largest metros
Growth, permitting, mix, wages and rents for the 30 biggest metros.
State scan
All 51 states on one page: growth, intensity, mix and values.
The 100 market profiles
One page per market for the top hundred counties.
Appendix: the full county index
Every qualifying county ranked, with the figures behind each rank.

18How this is measured

Every figure is computed by a deterministic pipeline from the same published files this site's free explorers render, and the prose interpolates the same values the tables show; no number is typed by hand. The universes, windows, and every known limitation:

The qualifying universe: counties with 2025 population ≥ 50,000 and a permits row for every year 2020–2025, a Redfin June-2026 price, and ACS income and value. That is 1,002 counties. Counties below 50,000 residents are excluded because their permit and price series are too thin to rank honestly, not because they lack opportunity. Connecticut is absent entirely: the state redefined its county-equivalents to planning regions, the sources in this report disagree about which vintage they publish, and a join across that disagreement would fabricate markets.
The supply window is 2022–2025 everywhere. The Census county and place annual permit files reach full coverage only from 2022 (fewer than half the qualifying counties have 2020–2021 rows); rather than mixing windows per county, every cumulative supply figure at every grain uses the same four complete years. Population growth is quoted 2020–2025 (the PEP series is complete), and the units-per-new-resident ratio matches its windows on both sides: 2022–2025 units over 2022–2025 population change.
Permits: Census Building Permits Survey, annual 2019–2025; county, place and state files. Permits are authorizations, not starts or completions. Multifamily = units in 5+ unit structures. City figures are index-joined through the survey's place directory, excluding its synthetic balance-of-county rows; city populations are the survey's own.
Population and migration: Census PEP Vintage 2025 (2020–2025), county grain. One vintage throughout; components are cumulated over the 2021–2025 estimate years (2020 is a nine-month stub).
Prices: monthly through 2026-06; five-year growth vs 2021-06. County grain, never aggregated upward; a county absent from a month is a gap, not a zero. Five-year growth compares June 2026 to June 2021 at the county's own published medians.
Values and incomes: ACS 2020–2024 five-year (values, incomes). Value-to-income divides the ACS median home value by the ACS median household income; both carry sampling error, and small differences between counties are not differences.
The school signal is a FAMILY-DEMAND measure, not a quality ranking: 50% K-12 enrollment growth 2019–2024, 25% pupil-teacher ratio (inverted), 25% free/reduced-lunch share (inverted), each z-scored over the qualifying set, rescaled to 50±10 (NCES CCD county files, 2019 and 2024). Graduation rates, absenteeism and test scores are not published at county grain and are not in it. The FRL component makes it partly an income measure; that is disclosed here precisely so a reader can discount it.
The Development Opportunity Index: seven pillars (population growth ↑, domestic migration ↑, labor-force growth ↑, price momentum ↑, value-to-income ↓, school signal ↑, units per new resident ↓), z-scored over the qualifying set, winsorized ±2.5σ, equal weights, scaled 50±10. Counties losing 2022–2025 population take the supply pillar's floor. Equal weighting is an editorial choice; every pillar score is published so the reader can re-weight it.
Labor market: LAUS county annual 2019 and 2025; rents context: HUD FMR FY2026; metro wages: QCEW Q4-2025 average weekly wages.
What this report is not: a parcel or subdivision feasibility tool. Its finest grain is the county and the permitting city. Site selection inside a market needs parcel data, entitlement counsel and local brokerage, none of which a federal dataset carries.

Note. Ranks run 1 = best in the stated direction. A dash is a figure the source does not publish for that geography and is excluded from that ranking; it is never a zero. Assembled August 2026; each figure refers to its stated vintage, not the assembly date.