Houston poised to be best housing market for 2009

Texas cities fill top five

Wendy Natt, Mar 11, 09.

In the midst of a very weak national housing market and plans for its recovery, Builder magazine, in conjunction with Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, compiled a list of their projections for the fifteen “healthiest” markets for 2009, with Houston listed at the top, immediately followed by four other Texas cities.

Builder drew the list from the nation’s top 75 housing markets, analyzing and ranking them on variables like population trends, job growth, stability of home values, and rate of building permits. The combined metrics provided each market’s score.

See Houston’s figures, and why its housing market is expected to be one of the fastest to recover from the collapse.

Austin, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Dallas, respectively, ranked second through fifth place .

A follow-up article in Builder ranked the bottom fifteen housing markets, or those expected to take the longest to recover. Florida and California cities strongly dominated the list, but Detroit - a city that has suffered major losses in jobs, population, and home values for several years now - was at the bottom.