DC Area Tops Inman's Real Estate Markets to Watch in 2011

• March 14th 2011

by UrbanTurf Staff

The DC area recently ranked #1 on the Inman News list of real estate markets to watch in 2011.

Reports that the DC region (see note on Inman’s wide coverage area below) has a healthy housing market relative to other metro areas in the country is, frankly, not really news at this point, so rather than reporting on why DC topped the list (low unemployment, high median sales price growth, affordability, job growth, etc.), UrbanTurf picked out a few things from the analysis that seemed new to us:

• 78.8 percent of homes in the DC area were affordable to families making the area’s median income in fourth-quarter 2010, according to an index from the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo. The index reports that in the DC area, median family income was $101,700 and the median home sales price was $277,000.

• DC, along with nine other states, saw more inbound cross-state household relocations than outbound relocations in 2010, according to a migrations patterns study used by Inman.

• At least seven of the ten “markets to watch” in 2010 were locations where the health care and medical industries were major employers.

Here is a list of the ten markets that Inman deemed worth watching this year:

1. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Va.-Md.-W.Va.
2. Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.
3. Des Moines, Iowa
4. Portland-South Portland-Biddeford, Maine
5. Kennewick-Richland-Pasco, Wash.
6. Fargo, N.D.-Minn.
7. Burlington-South Burlington, Vt.
8. Bloomington-Normal, Ill.
9. Bismarck, N.D.
10. Elmira, N.Y.

Note about coverage area: The DC area is defined as DC proper and parts of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_area_tops_inmans_real_estate_markets_to_watch_in_2011/3148.