10 Places Where Housing Market Is the Weakest

(April 17) -- The U.S. housing recovery is shaping up as an uneven rebound, with only a few markets emerging as places to be for investors and homebuyers looking for bargains that won't go sour.

The real story is how many markets are still perhaps a year or more away from recovery: most of them.

Even the hottest spots barely reached the threshold of a 50 score, the minimum necessary to indicate a "healthy, not weak" housing market, according to Hanley Wood Market Intelligence's "Builder Market Health Index." An MHI score of 100 indicates a market in the best of times.

Hanley Wood used projections for growth in employment, household formation, income and home values to determine MHIs for its annual Builder Market Health Index: Complete 2010 Rankings of 100 metropolitan areas. Only areas with the most building permit activity, albeit paltry, were included.

It's not a pretty picture.

After several years of post-boom decline, even the top markets are barely into recovery and have yet to see consistent increases in building, employment, income and home values. Only Austin, Texas (57.5), and Raleigh, N.C. (50.5), managed to score a "healthy" market rating -- and even they are not without their blemishes.

AOL News recently reported Hanley Wood's Hottest Housing Markets for 2010. Now, here are those at the bottom of the chart, and perhaps a year or more away from real market bottom.

91. Pittsburgh -- Struggling with the transition from a manufacturing and industrial economy to a knowledge economy, Pittsburgh recently gained national attention for its downtown revitalization efforts. However, a growing 9.5 percent unemployment rate, sliding incomes and flat job growth left Steel Town with an 8.5 MHI.

92. New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, La. -- Nearly five years after Hurricane Katrina, the Crescent City may have a Super Bowl win in its trophy case, but it's still showing signs of the storm's devastation, especially in its tourist industry. The city scored minuses in all economic growth categories, netting it a 7.8 MHI.

93. Tallahassee, Fla. -- Overbuilt and underbought, Tallahassee -- like much of the rest of Florida -- is on the ropes with a 7.7 MHI. The capital city's Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy says that even if Florida's employment grew at the previous record rate, it would take nearly five years to restore jobs lost since 2007.

94. Syracuse, N.Y. -- Posting an MHI of 7.2, the town of Syracuse faces a $35 million budget deficit and a property tax increase of 6 percent. Not surprisingly, both household growth (down 0.3 percent) and home price appreciation (down 3.8 percent) are expected to fall.

95. Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, Ohio -- Cleveland is doing better than Toledo and Cincinnati, as unemployment here has flattened and is expected to drop as incomes rise slightly. Yet with home price appreciation expected to drop by nearly 5 percent this year, the town's MHI stands at 6.6.

96. Jacksonville, Fla. -- Jacksonville is stuck with a 6.0 MHI. It won't likely see a return to peak 2007-2007 prices until 2020, according to a recent Fiserv Case-Shiller study. It still has until 2011 before the bottom drops out and leaves home prices nearly 40 percent less than 2006-2007 peak prices.

97. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Homestead, Fla. -- Still a nice, sunny place to visit, Miami will cost you more than 18 percent in lost home value if you live there this year. The beach town has one of the worst home price depreciations in the nation, according to Hanley Wood -- and scored a 5.6 MHI.

98. Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Mich. -- Long devastated by the troubled auto and manufacturing industries, Motown's population has declined by 50,000 in the past decade as its unemployment rate has risen to more than 14 percent, both among the highest in the nation. The result? An MHI of 4.3.

99. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla. -- Hanley Wood expects home prices to continue to decline here by 18 percent this year as unemployment (at 13.1 percent) continues to rise and households shrink. However, the University of Central Florida's Institute for Economic Competitiveness recently reported that with annual wages set to grow by 2.9 percent, the area could lead the rest of the Sunshine State out of the downturn (even with an MHI of 3.0).

100. Lakeland-Winter Haven, Fla. -- With a bottom-of-the-heap MHI of 2.8, this area suffers a 13.4 percent unemployment rate that hasn't topped out and home prices expected to sink by 10.2 percent this year. Job, household and income growth are all flat. Money magazine reports the area enjoyed a 117 percent increase in home prices from 2000 to the peak of the market; since then, homes lost 52 percent of their value and aren't expected to hit bottom until the fourth quarter of this year -- if the town is lucky.