While several areas of the United States continue to face a housing slump, Wake County is not one of them. On the contrary, we are doing better than the national average in several respects:

• Our Home Prices Are Strong — While it would be a stretch to call Wake a “sellers market” right now, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said in February that home prices in the Raleigh-Cary area increased by 2.96 percent in 2008. That ranks the Raleigh metropolitan area 18th best in the country. While the number of transactions has dropped in Wake County, prices have remained much stronger than elsewhere. In fact, the agency said that nationally, home prices fell by 4.5 percent in 2008. 
  
• Real Estate Agents Say Business Is Picking Up — Some local real estate agents recently told TV station NBC17 that months of declining activity have ebbed due to more federal money to lenders, lower interest rates on mortgages and incentives such as tax credits to first-time home buyers. One expert also believes that the area’s high rate of population growth of nearly 5 percent annually, one of the largest among metropolitan markets over the last five years, will help too, as more people move here over time and will prefer to live in homes rather than apartments. 
  
• Our Housing Future Looks Bright — Raleigh has been namedone of the healthiest housing markets of 2009 by Builder Magazine. The publication analyzed 75 housing markets across the country and ranked them based on their population trends, job growth, home values and rate building permits. Raleigh was ranked sixth by the magazine with a total of 11,386 total building permits in 2008.

These indicators show how resilient Wake’s housing market is even during challenging economic periods. The fact is that since our economy is so broad, we tend to suffer less and recover quicker from downturns because we are not dependent on one industry. Our housing market reflects this trend, and we expect Wake to be back on track with housing sales before the market rebounds both on the state and national levels.