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Last month, Builder Magazine released its findings in a study that teamed them up with Hanley Wood Marketing Intelligence. You can read some background for the study and a full list of their findings on the Builder Magazine website: Builder Magazine.
Some of the interesting findings that really stood out were the fact that people are still spending money on housing, and they are spending it in prime locations. Pretty obvious, right? What is interesting though is that the interesting aspects are pretty wide-ranging, but the geographic locations are not. Areas close to major universities, traditional ‘play areas’ such as beaches and mountains, and areas known for their innovation all ranked very high and are sure to lead the way when the market returns. As for the geographic distribution, read the list and pick out the pattern. Here are the top 15 healthiest housing markets for 2009:
Myrtle Beach, SC
Wilmington, NC
Charlotte, NC
Denver, Co
Nashville, TN
Washington, DC
Fayetteville, AR
Indianapolis, IN
Seattle, WA
Raleigh, NC
Dallas, TX
San Antonio, TX
Fort Worth, TX
Austin, TX
Houston, TX
With Texas having the top 5 spots and the Carolinas and Arkansas taking up 5 more, it is clear that the experts feel that the deep south is the place people want to be. The article doesn’t get into the reason people are actively buying in those areas, instead relying on facts such as median home price and number of building permits to judge the activity in the area. Sure affordable housing makes the market more active (In Indianapolis, the median home price for 2008 was only around $111,000) but several of the locations had median prices above and well above the national average. What do the southern states have that others don’t? Is it the atmosphere, the weather, or the often-mentioned casual atmosphere you find in some of those towns? Or is it just that that’s where the jobs are and that’s why there is still a housing market. I wonder what the list of the best job markets would look like and how closely it would resemble this list.

Written by Ben Hirsch