Details about this story

• Source: New York Times
• Date: February 15, 2008
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Clifford Krauss , Ron Nixon
• Topics: Real Estate
• Data Types: Other Data
• Description/Excerpt: In the America of big-city housing markets, especially on the coasts and in the struggling industrial Midwest, the huge run-up in values in recent years has given way to big drops in prices and sales volume. Millions of people owe more than their houses are worth. But in the other America, specifically in cities like Austin; Grand Forks, N.D.; Yakima, Wash.; and Salem, Ore., the available evidence suggests the real estate market is holding up. Prices there never boomed as crazily as they did in the big cities, and now, even though volume is down almost everywhere, prices in many of these towns are firm or rising. Real estate statistics must be interpreted with caution, especially when sales volumes are declining, as they are all over the country. But an analysis by The New York Times of three distinct data sets - mortgage data from the government, sales figures from the Realtors’ group and courthouse records from a company called DataQuick - produced a list of 17 metropolitan areas where all three sources of information agree that prices were still rising as of late last year, the most recent figures available.