Healthiest Housing Markets: Mid-2011 Update
Posted in Sarasota NeighborhoodsIt’s time to take a second look at the healthiest housing markets for this year and next.
By: Boyce Thompson
Twice annually, Builder works with Hanley Wood Market Intelligence to compile a list of the healthiest housing markets in the United States, based on forward projections for the metrics that drive housing production–jobs, price appreciation, population growth, and income growth. The projections come from Moody’s Economy.com.
A lot has happened in the housing market since we last compiled this list in February. We had a double-dip in home prices. Only a small improvement in employment occurred on a national basis. And the long-vaunted housing recovery, which most housing economists pegged for late this year, hasn’t materialized.
Rising home prices, job gains, and improvement in median incomes will drive the healthiest markets over the next year and a half. Moody’s projects that permit activity may double in some of the very hottest of these markets, as the long-awaited housing recovery takes hold.
9: Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice, Fla.
Health Index: 79.5
2011 Population Forecast: 697,300
2011 Total Building Permit Forecast: 789
2012 Total Building Permit Forecast: 1,373
Sarasota, a seaside metro area with affordable housing stock, is one of three Florida markets to make our top 20. The area is south of Tampa Bay and North of Fort Myers.
Though permit activity nosedived last year, it regained forward momentum this year on the strength of a pick-up in the multifamily market. Most of the permit activity is in Manatee County, which was up strongly in the first half of the year. Pulte, D.R. Horton, and Lennar are active in Sarasota, along with local powerhouses Neal Communities and Lee Wetherington Homes.
Local real estate agents, whose blogs might have you believe there was never a housing recession here, will be happy to hear that homes prices are expected to rise 2.8% next year on the strength of some of the strongest employment growth on a percentage basis (3.7%) in the country
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