These Are the Top 10 States for Fixer-Upper Homes

A new report shows such homes are in increased demand around the country, good news for contractors in key markets.

Searches for “fixer-upper” homes have more than tripled over the past four years, a new Realtor.com study shows as potential home buyers look for ways to buy in a marketplace where prices keep going up. Such homes received 52 percent more page views than comparable older, affordable homes, the website’s research discovered.

The report also identified the top ten metropolitan areas where fixer-upper-type homes accounted for more listings than any other regions in the country. They tended to be in the Northeastern, Midwestern and Southern areas of the country but some of the individual metro areas might be surprising.

Leading the way was Syracuse, NY where 11.5 percent of all listed homes were identified as fixer-uppers. It was followed by Toledo, OH (10.3 percent), the New Orleans-Metairie metropolitan area in Louisiana (10.2 percent), Jackson, MS (10.0 percent) and St. Louis (9.9 percent), spanning Missouri and Illinois, rounding out the top five.

Areas ranked sixth through tenth, all with fixer-upper shares between 9.8 percent and 9.5 percent, were Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY; New Haven, CT; Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI; Dayton-Kettering-Beavercreek, OH; and Buffalo-Cheektowaga, NY. 

Fixer-uppers, which could be remodeled by either existing homeowners or the new home buyers as well as by professional contractors, typically have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and were built in 1958, Realtor.com said. It reported that in “July 2025, there were 79,175 fixer-uppers on the market – up 18.8% from July 2021 (66,619 listings) – but they now make up a smaller share of listings: 5.2 percent today vs. 6.1 percent then, making them somewhat rarer than four years ago.”

Nationwide, homes marketed as fixer-uppers come with a median list price tag of $200,000, the website said, a 54 percent discount compared to the $436,250 median for all single-family homes.

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