| The Country’s Best Sellers Markets | June 25th, 2008 |
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Forbes also checked the change in sales rate over the last year to measure tightening or loosening of the market. And they factored in a measure of price stability to prevent the list from being a rundown of upstart markets. San Francisco ranked second on Forbes list. Like all of the best-performing markets we have barriers to over building, which keeps inventory relatively tight. Our obstacles to creating new housing stock are wide-ranging, from NIMBY politics to our geography– surrounded by water on three sides, there’s little land to build on. Forbes also cited our strong ‘in-migration’ (who invents these terms?) stemming from local economic strength. The bio-tech and health development in Mission Bay promises to bring in enough people to fill all the new condos and apartments in that corner of the City. In-migration is also a factor in the strong Raleigh, NC housing market, which came in No. 1 on the list. Moderate growth and disciplined building over the last five years prevented the Raleigh market from developing a significant glut. A strong local economy has also helped contribute to the city’s healthy 1.6% vacancy rate. A strong economy and ‘in-migration’ also helped Austin rank high as a seller’s market. A 1.5% vacancy rate, like Austin’s, is where the national average stood during the most recent housing boom. In other words, that low a vacancy rate indicates a housing market at close to full capacity. Some cities that might have made the list didn’t because of a lack of data. Seattle for example has the lowest vacancy rate in the country, a strong economy and a limited supply of land to build on. But because some hard data was lacking however, Forbes was unable to include Seattle in the study. Leave a Reply |
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Recently Forbes Magazine attempted to judge which cities had the best Sellers Markets. Their main measurement was ‘days of inventory,’ which is a simple supply vs. demand analysis of housing stock: At the current rate of sales, how long would it take to sell off the inventory whether single family homes or condos? If that measure comes back high, houses sit on the market longer. If it is low, the market is tightening. This is good news for the seller.