Houston Makes Top 10

Houston Chronicle June 27, 2009
By Nancy Sarnoff

Despite sales declines and recent dips in home prices, Houston’s housing market has gotten high praise recently from a national think tank and a research group.

This area was named among the top 10 large U.S. markets with the best expected performance in home values over the next 12 months by Local Market Monitor, a Cary, N.C.-based real estate market research provider.

Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio also made the list of markets where home prices are expected to remain level.

“These are markets that did not have a large boost in home prices over the last few years and therefore, even though the economy is doing poorly, no adjustment in prices has been necessary,” president Ingo Winzer said.

The median price per square foot for a Houston-area home fell 2 percent last year after years of steady gains.

In a separate report, the Brookings Institution put Houston in the top spot for home price appreciation.

The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown area showed a 4.7 percent increase from the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009.

And the Houston Heights got an ego boost last week when it was named by This Old House magazine as one of the Best Old-House Neighborhoods in the United States and Canada.

The neighborhood’s architecture ranges from Queen Annes and Colonial Revival mansions to Craftsman bungalows.

The Heights is among the best places for “urban suburbanites,” families, single women buyers and food lovers, the magazine said.