The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) released March 21 the list of cities where the housing markets have been improving and expanding. According to the report, the housing market has shown consistent improvement in the last seven months and the list has reached a total of 274 metros.
"This is the second consecutive month in which every state is represented by at least one metro on the improving list. The expanding housing recovery is energizing communities nationwide by generating jobs and local tax revenues - and it could be an even more potent force for economic growth if credit for building and buying homes was more readily available," Rick Judson, NAHB Chairman, said in a press statement.
NAHB's "The First American Improving Markets Index (IMI)", tracks various metro areas of the country on the basis of construction employment, housing permits and home prices for the previous six months in the region.
The report says, since February, the list welcomed 15 new entrants from various states of America and the District of Columbia. Thirty four new metropolitan markets witnessed sharp housing trends while 19 existing markets were dropped from the list.
Among the new entrants, the most attractive markets were in the regions of Birmingham, Santa Barbara, Bloomington and Colorado Springs. The report also stated that currently 75 percent of the 361 metro areas have a solid housing market foundation.
Check out the complete list of metropolitan areas here.
However, experts believe that growth in many recovering markets is being decelerated by credit availability issues and building lot and material shortages. Construction material costs soared in February and are expected to be high for the rest of the year. Moreover, construction on new homes also declined to drop to 7 percent in the same month.
But since the housing markets are slowly recovering, hopes are still high.
"With the understanding that there are still a lot of uncertainties in the regulatory arena, it looks like we are finally seeing the beginning of what could be a broad and deep recovery of the nation's housing market," said Kurt Pfotenhauer, vice chairman of First American Title Insurance Company, in the press statement.
