JUNE 20, 2011
How to Tell if Your Housing Market Has Hit Bottom
Three essential clues may signal if better times are ahead
By DAVID CROOK
At first glance, you're not likely to see a lot of similarities between stately Cambridge, Mass., and sprawling Denton, Texas.
Cambridge (population about 105,000) was already more than 200 years old when Denton (120,000) was founded in 1857. From the center of Cambridge, it's an easy stroll across the Charles River into Boston. Denton, in contrast, sits where Interstate Highway 35 divides—to the west, it's 41 miles to Fort Worth; to the east, 39 miles to Dallas.
But both are college towns. Cambridge is well known as the home of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Denton has North Texas State University and Texas Woman's University.
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Some words of caution.
First: Don't look at these as housing-market "winners," and don't go looking for new places where you can score a killing. That's the thinking that got much of the country in trouble in the first place. Housing isn't an investment like stocks or bonds and shouldn't be approached that way.
Second: Although many of the areas have certain traits in common, most are just nice places to live, places where anyone might want to work and raise a family. Each is special in its own right.
Finally, the biggest reason that most are surviving the downturn is because they never experienced the huge price runups that Florida, Nevada or California did in the first place.
In Denton, Zillow estimates values are down 7.4% from their peak, while values are down about 8.6% in Cambridge. That's about where prices stood in 2004 in both towns. In contrast, the latest Case-Shiller Home Price Index indicates national prices are at 2002 levels.
So what should you look for if you are thinking of selling your home or buying a new one? What does a healthy real-estate market look like today?
Here are three big factors to look for. If your community shares any of these traits, you may already be on the rebound.
And they are: Employment, Rents and Foreclosures.
Read the full story, and the details, here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576363143130774406.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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