iStock photo illustration

Some experts expect the nation’s housing markets to begin a long, grinding climb-out next year from the multi-year inventory dives they’ve been on since 2020, but two Massachusetts markets are expected to be top performers.

Realtor.com’s economics team put the Springfield and Worcester areas in the seventh and eighth spots on its prediction list of the 10 top housing markets of 2024, alongside communities as diverse as Toledo, Ohio and Los Angeles.

The ranking sorted the nation’s metro areas by a combination of growth in both number of sales and median sale price.

The common themes among the highest-ranked: affordable alternatives in the Northeast and Midwest, stronger sales growth in markets with less remote work and California markets experiencing a bounce-back due to declining interest rates.

Worcester and Springfield were both singled out for offering lower-priced alternatives to Greater Boston and their relatively strong economies, and the analysis noted many Northeast and Midwest metros have higher-than-normal rates of Baby Boomer homeowners who’ve paid off their mortgages, potentially creating a larger pool of potential downsizers who could generate more housing inventory as market conditions loosen.

Realtor.com’s economists predicted that the Worcester area would see the number of homes sold grow 9.1 percent year-over-year in 2024, while Greater Springfield would see a 10.5 percent bump in the same figure, albeit to numbers that will still be substantially below their pre-pandemic averages. At the same time, both will see more than 4 percent home-price growth, the analysis predicted.

The same report predicted Greater Boston’s home sales total would essentially stabilize next year, while its median sale price would deflate slightly.