FrontDoor's Home Finance and Home Value Guide

Beaumont, Texas tops our list of strong real estate markets.

Although no one's suggesting the real estate market is sunshine and roses right now, statistics about declining home prices across the nation can be misleading.

Prices in the United States as a whole dropped 12.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007, but that figure is primarily an average between more stable areas of the country -- often pockets of the Northeast and South -- and areas that suffered precipitous declines -- such as California, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, and parts of Ohio. So it's really important to look closely at individual cities, and even neighborhoods within those cities, to determine the state of the market rather than looking at national averages.

In fact, some real estate markets are not only remaining stable through this time of turmoil, they're appreciating. While these cities are very different from each other, what they have in common is affordability of housing, which prevents the wide swings in price that you see in troubled parts of the country, and a strong local economy. According to the National Association of Realtors, these five metro areas are tops for real estate gains as of the fourth quarter of 2008...

Start with number 5 >>

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