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.

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.

Nevertheless, home values still rose 87%. Part of the growth is due to the city's healthy economy, which is driven in part by the tech industry. Intel (INTC), for example, is one of the city's largest employers. From February 2007 to February 2008, single-family-home values here dropped by just 2%.

Out of the five best-performing cities, Seattle experienced the biggest housing bubble. Single-family home values grew a whopping 92% between January 2000 and August 2007. Steady employment, however, helped keep home values relatively stable even as the bubble burst. Single-family homes lost just 2.7% of their value from February 2007 to February 2008.

While Boston experienced one of the earlier declines in home values in the nation, the market has since rebounded some, says Wyss. Between February 2007 and February 2008, single-family-home prices were down 4.6%.