Top 5 Cities Surviving the Housing Bust

The latest Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price indexes showed that 10 out of 20 major metropolitan U.S. cities saw double-digit percentage declines in single-family-home values between February 2007 and February of this year. But some markets bucked the trend. Charlotte, N.C., claims the esteemed honor of being the only city to post a gain, while four others showed minor decreases of between 2% to 5%.

Still, these results are dismal compared with the surge in home values seen just a few years ago. Due to the subprime meltdown and ensuing credit crunch, any recovery in home prices will be slow, says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's. As mortgage lenders continue to tighten their lending requirements, fewer prospective homeowners are securing mortgages, leaving a glut of homes on the market and further depressing prices.

So what's the secret of those cities managing to stave off exorbitant declines? Job growth. Each of the best-performing cities on the Case-Shiller index offer plentiful jobs with salaries big enough for homeowners to handle their mortgage payments, says Warren Bland, an economic geographer and author of "Retire in Style: 60 Outstanding Places Across the USA and Canada." For the most part, these cities also didn't fall prey to the hordes of speculators that, in some markets, sparked a triple-digit percentage surge in home prices during the real estate boom.

View our slideshow below to see the five cities that are best maintaining their home values.

Charlotte, N.C.

One Wachovia Center in downtown Charlotte.

In addition to strong employment prospects, Charlotte is inexpensive to build in and speculation has remained low (home prices rose by just 36% between January 2000 and September 2007). That combination has helped keep the value of single-family homes relatively stable, says Marc Louargand, president of the American Real Estate Society. Between February 2007 and February 2008, prices rose 1.5% — the only increase in a major metropolitan city.

Strong Housing Markets
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