Cities such as Boise, Austin and Phoenix defined the pandemic housing boom. Now, as falling mortgage rates raise the prospect of 2024 being a strong year for homebuilding, new “edge” markets are seeing a surge in activity.

This is because three factors that dictate where builders put up houses have changed: the land they control, the economics used to underwrite new deals, and signaling from the stock market about how aggressive they should be. It’s all pushing builders away from the big growth markets of the 2010s and into areas that haven’t been built up — or bid up — to the same extent.