WalletHub recently looked at the best real-estate markets. Here is how they described their rankings:

Whether you’re joining the real-estate business or just looking for a place to call home, it’s important to get a handle on the housing markets you’re considering before investing in a property. This year, the housing market is skewed much more toward sellers, with mortgage rates having nearly doubled in the past year and home values having risen nearly 21% on average.

If you aim for long-term growth, equity and profit with your housing purchase, you’ll need to look beyond tangible factors like square footage and style. Those factors certainly drive up property values. From an investor’s standpoint, though, they hold less significance than historical market trends and the economic health of residents.

To determine the best local real-estate markets in the U.S., WalletHub compared 300 cities of varying sizes across 17 key indicators of housing-market attractiveness and economic strength. Our data set ranges from median home-price appreciation to job growth.

This is very different than Money’s best places to live or other rankings that consider communities. This is about rising property values and return on investment. This is about making money by purchasing property. This is about demand and sales.

What would be interesting to consider is where this consideration of return on investment, a growing concern among American homeowners, overlaps with quality of life or desirable communities. Homeowners often have options about which communities or neighborhoods to select, whether they are looking within a metropolitan region where there might be dozens or more options or if the COVID-19 work from home options now mean people do not necessarily have to live near work. Would a return on investment beat out good schools or proximity to work or affordability?