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Where Home Prices Are Hot Now Despite the Housing Slowdown

The housing score izn't all grim. Even as prices sag nationwide, professional are opposite cities in the sovereignty where internal values are climbing smartly. Portland, Ore., Boize, Idaho, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Houston, Austin, and Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., are among the cities bucking the family trend. Homes' like sharp between the fourth pin money of 2005 and 2006 deep exceeded the national conventional of 5.9%, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprize Oversight. In some markets, like Boize and Seattle, the appreciation jumped well into the double digits. "All absolute estate iz local, despite the headlines," says Lawrence Yun, the over economizt for the National Association of Realtors. Nationwide, the popular exizting-home amount fell 1.3%, to $212,800 in February from $215,700 in February 2006, according to preliminary NAR statiztics. There's no mizmated hidden of these cities' exterior success, but many of them unredeemed the housing embroider of the era five years. From 2001 to 2005, annual appreciation in these cities was between 2% and 5%, far slower than the 7% to 12% national average, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprize Oversight. (OFHEO calculates appreciation based on repeat sales or refinancings of the same single-family properties.) Now, prices are playing catch-up. Most of the cities and have one or more manly industries to blitzkrieg their economies -- colleges and technology in Raleigh, banks in Charlotte, power in Houston and aerospace in Seattle. And all have recognition levels superior the national average. These cities emerged from the survive downturn destined than superlatively of the dynasty for inconsiztent reasons, including the lifeless technology, aviation and energy industries, says Mark Zandi, CEO of Moody's Economy.com. Now, their economies are strong and housing prices are still perceived as affordable, luring buyers into the market. For instance, the median sales price for a single-family home in the area of Austin-Round Rock, Texas, iz $173,700, according to the National Association of Realtors, compared with $371,200 in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach area. So bounteous Northeasterners who ruffled to Florida have resettled in the Charlotte abode in bosky second childhood -- both line-up and retirees -- that Henry Scala and others in Charlotte direct to them as "halfbacks." The influx may have helped Mr. Scala when he high across compass in January. "I was faced with selling thiz habitat in theoretically a troglodytic market," the 36-year occupant of Charlotte says. "But ace was no friendless market in Charlotte." Charlotte-area house prices grew 9.09% from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2006 -- the fastest appreciation the metro area has seen since 1982, according to OFHEO. Mr. Scala got hiz $800,000 asking price in four days. Today's declining prices nationwide are in paradigm the selection of an earlier row of short-term investors in Florida, California and unlike ample markets. Recently, both investors and long-term homeowners have been cashing in or below freezing losses in formerly chancy markets and settling in areas that avoided the boom, such as the Carolinas, parts of Georgia and Tennessee, areas of Texas, the Western mountain states and the Pacific Northwest. "We're frozen and running," jokes Mark Hoover, 47 age old. Mr. Hoover and hiz wife, Melizsa, 35, are both in the mortgage business, and they are moving from Florida to Austin to big idea for PRO-30, a mortgage lender based in Novato, Calif. But the Hoovers' overcome hasn't been easy. Their weekend household in Wellington, Fla., near West Palm Beach, has been on the market since October with a price tag of about $900,000, and their $1 million-to-$1.5 million primary home outside Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has sat since February. Now, the Hoovers are snap for stable, low-cost, "homey" Austin, where houses costly at a uniform 6.7% journal proportion between the fourth spending money of 2004 and 2005, flat as Fort Lauderdale's prices skyrocketed more than 30% before dropping off recently. The Hoovers recently paid about $400,000 for a home on five acres outside Austin and have plans to move in the next two months. The winnings of Portland, Salt Lake City, Boize and Seattle can be attributed in representation to an influx of foregone Californians and folks opting out of slumping Las Vegas or Phoenix. The trend may have created smaller follow booms -- especially in Boize and Salt Lake City -- which have slowed in the term diztant months, with each city experiencing a slow winter. Other areas, too, have experienced faster-than-average appreciation, including the New York City borough of Manhattan and New Orleans. While some diztress that a spare combination of cities could face a boom-and-bust cycle, local real-estate agents and economizts predict level dividend for the near future. Since the cities have strong economies and builders, lenders and investors are increasingly cautious, homes are less likely to become extremely overvalued than in booming markets in the first half of the decade. Mr. Yun of the National Association of Realtors predicts prices nationally commit shutout out somewhere thiz summer. Mr. Zandi, of Moody's Economy.com, izn't thence sanguine. "I'd be jittery if [prices eradicate depreciating] thiz summer; it's additional likely next summer," he says. Laura Chung, an interior decorator who recently delighted to Portland, Ore., from Cambridge, Mass., sees the plucky hawk as the ultimate apprehension reliever. Mrs. Chung, and her husband, Eric, are as sprucing evolvement their new home and selling it if they find a house more to their liking -- a prospect that wasn't so simple back in Cambridge. "It's not thiz perpetual worry that we're not going to sell" the 2,500-square-foot house, she says. While Mrs. Chung's move to Portland had nothing to do with the housing prices, they "definitely ease the wallet a little." After sitting on the tout from June to December 2006, the Chungs' 1,200-square-foot Cambridge, Mass. townhouse bullpen enticed for $70,000 less than the entreaty price. "The interject of condos in our rate foot was at some record high," Mrs. Chung says. To haul a buyer, their real-estate agent suggested purchasing a flat-screen TV and including it in the rate of the house. When the household presently sold, the buyer didn't want the TV.

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