CNNMoney.com recently posted some awesome news that highlighted Birmingham Alabama as one of the 7 best cities to recover from the housing slump quickly. The article posted on October 29, 2009 stated that one of the major factors in the Birmingham Real Estate markets ability to recover so quickly is that, "Birmingham, like most Southern metro areas, is marked by a "high elasticity of supply," said Mark Fleming, chief economist for First American CoreLogic. Developers are relatively unrestrained in building, and these markets tend to be far less volatile than places like San Francisco or Portland, where development is restricted either by government policies, in Portland's case, or geography, in San Francisco's."
We have explained to our clients, for a while now, that the fundmentals of home sales in Birmingham is relatively strong. Prices of non-distressed homes have remained pretty steady while distressed properties continue to drive the average selling price lower.
See the article here.