So says Forbes in one of their rankings which always gets juices flowing. Charleston and Columbia are on the list, which is heavy with Texas cities and tons of Upstate New York towns. The latter never saw much of anything in the way of property value growth for the past decade. As for Texas, a change in way the state opted to fund public schools — essentially routing property tax dollars from one town to another — put a kink in property values for a numbers of years, with some actually falling. As a result, and combined with the oil industry loadstone in the past year, values never zoomed up and have recently held up well.
Charlotte, as we’ve been trying to tell everyone, did experience a housing boom in the past decade. Perhaps not on the scale of Miami or Vegas, but a very large increase in supply that still trailed demand. With the coming loss of jobs via Bank of Wachovia, demand will not support that supply. When that happens, prices fall. Sometimes by a lot.
