John Rebchook is a former Rocky Mountain News reporter with more than 30 years of experience in writing and communications... The Denver-area housing market has been ranked the 12th healthiest in the nation, by Hanley Wood.
Hanley Wood, which publishes 30 magazines on the construction industry and has a research division, analyzed 75 markets based on metrics such as population trends, job growth, and building permit activity.
The top 15 markets are all “great places to live, either close to the ocean, mountains, or major universities. Most of them didn’t have a huge run-up in prices during the boom and aren’t experiencing rampant deflation during the bust,” according to the report.
Specifically, in regard to Denver, the report said this market “hasn’t been hit as hard by the home building recession as other Western markets, in part because it didn’t experience rampant price appreciation during the boom. That’s partly because there’s lots of land available to develop in Denver.”
The report noted that Beazer and Centex have pulled out of the market and that Village Homes had filed for bankruptcy. It did not mention that McStain Neighborhoods also has filed for bankruptcy.
