Two Iowa cities are on a list of 82 stable and improving U.S. housing markets. The National Association of Homebuilders compiled the list. It concludes home prices in Ames and Iowa City have seen slight but steady improvement in the past six months.
Housing prices reaches a trough in Ames in February of last year according to the report, while Iowa City home prices bottomed out a few months earlier, in November of 2010. Permits for new home building in the two cities had reached a low point even earlier, in mid-2010. No other Iowa metros were named on the National Association of Homebuilders’ list of improving housing markets.
Only two neighboring states had metro areas on the list. Lincoln, Nebraska is listed as one of the nation’s 82 improving housing markets, but Omaha is not. Five Missouri cities are on the list. The National Association of Homebuilders now considers about one-quarter of the nation’s metro areas to have improving housing markets.
