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Albany Faring Better Than Many Other Local Housing Markets
Speaking to a March 18 symposium on the economic outlook for Albany and other cities and towns in New York’s Capital Region, Jerry Howard, executive vice president and CEO of NAHB, noted that businesses in the area are fundamentally strong and in a much better position than many other parts of the country to weather the current economic storm.
The symposium, “Real Estate Reality: Building Momentum in the Capital Region,” was held at Proctors Theater in downtown Schenectady and was attended by an invitation-only audience of 450 people mostly in the construction and real estate industry.
The event was sponsored by the Capital Region Builders & Remodelers Association, which has mounted a campaign to alert area residences to home buying opportunities in the local market, which has held up significantly better than the national average.
“The Albany-Troy-Schenectady housing market is certainly performing better than many others nationwide, and that’s something to be grateful for,” said Howard, citing business expansion across the region.
“One of our biggest challenges at the national front during the ongoing housing market slowdown has been to get the media and consumers to realize that all housing markets are local, and every one is different,” Howard said. “While the slowdown is now affecting most markets across the country, you can’t paint them all with one brush.”
The region’s single-family permits were off by about 15% in 2007, only about half the decline registered nationally. With solid growth in employment and population, area home values edged up about 5% last year, when a good part of the rest of the country was experiencing declines.
“Looking at the most recent statistics — from unemployment to building permits, home prices and population growth — the region is doing much better than the national average,” he said. It is doing far better, he added, “than the hard-hit markets in Florida, Nevada, Arizona and California that are generating media headlines.”
The region has always been protected from sharp spikes in its economy because of the presence of the state government, the home builders association is telling prospective home buyers, and it is fast evolving into “Tech Valley.”
With expansion of Sematech, 500 new jobs from GE, biotech research and the probable entry of Advanced Micro Devices into the local marketplace, “we are seeing an upward trend that shows no sign of slowing down,” according to the HBA.
“When you combine all this with excellent universities, expansion in the service sector, a stable real estate market, our low cost of living and our proximity to New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C., you’ll understand why Tech Valley is the place to buy now,” the home builders say.
 Attend the Spring Construction Forecast Conference in April
Plan to attend NAHB's Spring Construction Forecast Conference on Thursday, April 24 at the National Housing Center in Washington, D.C. The conference brings together the nation's premier housing economists and finance experts for an in-depth examination of the economic outlook for the housing industry.
Can't attend? Watch the conference webcast live.
For more information, or to register for the conference or webcast, visit www.nahb.org/cfc.
 Want to Know the Housing Forecast for the Top 100 Metros?
Find out in HousingEconomic.com’s 2008 to 2009 Metro Forecast (free preview).
Get the metro forecast with in-depth analysis, overviews and downloadable Excel tables.
To learn more, visit www.HousingEconomics.com.
 Free NAHB Kit Gives Builders Back-to-Basics Tips to Navigate the Slowdown
What was once expected to be a relatively mild housing slump following three years of record new home construction and sales has given way to a significant downturn.
To help members navigate the uncharted waters of this slowdown, NAHB has compiled a comprehensive “Back to Basics” online toolkit — the best of the basics, the tried and true and the truly new. To access the toolkit, click here.
To access the “Back to Basics” toolkit, you must be an NAHB member and have a login to www.nahb.org. To create a login, go to www.nahb.org/login or click on the log-in button on the main menu bar.
For assistance, call the NAHB Member Service Center at 800-368-5242.
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