Pittsburgh Hasn't Boomed, Yet

Rochester or Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh or Rochester? Which Rust Belt city will boom first? Forbes wonders:

“For real estate to do well you want to see two things: that incomes are growing rapidly like they are in a market like San Jose … and that the growth in jobs attracts other people to that market,” says Ingo Winzer, founder and president of Local Market Monitor. However, job growth should be looked at as a bullish housing indicator only if the unemployment rate is already relatively low – that suggests local companies are creating new jobs rather than rehiring for positions they cut during the recession. ...

... Two surprising entrants on our list are Pittsburgh, Pa., and Rochester, N.Y., industrial-era boomtowns that went through several decades of economic decline. Pittsburgh has been one of the most stable housing markets over the past five years: Prices have been more or less flat since the market peak in 2007. Home prices in Rochester have dropped 15% since 2007, but its economy has managed to stabilize and hang onto jobs.  “They [Pittsburgh and Rochester] are not high-growth markets yet, and they haven’t attracted new people yet,” says Winzer. “But they are both creating new kinds of jobs — high-tech and medical research-related jobs — and that’s why … they will do better than most markets this year.”

Emphasis added. In both places, there is job creation without population growth. The thinking goes that this will continue to eat up unemployment fast enough to attract migrants. Stay tuned ...