(MONEY Magazine) – The White Sox's controversial Comiskey Park isn't the only new-home story in Chicago. The Windy City tops 49 other major metropolitan areas in our 1991 ranking of projected house-price changes over the next two years. According to the WEFA Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa. economic forecasting firm, the median price of an existing single-family home in Chicago will rise to $139,200 by the first quarter of 1993, which works out to a total gain of 5.2% after inflation. Although 5.2% sounds rather modest, it stands out in a national housing market expected to be as flat as an Illinois beanfield. The median U.S. home is expected to appreciate only 2.5% after inflation, to $103,700, by '93. Though no region appears particularly strong, midwestern cities took six of the 15 top spots, thanks in part to their sturdy export-oriented economies. In Chicago, for example, roughly three new professional or managerial jobs are expected to be created for each new worker over the next five years. Most of the other metro areas where housing looks comparatively healthy, such as New Orleans, Anaheim, Calif. and Middlesex County in New Jersey, are bouncing back from previous slumps. The comeback market of the year, though, is No. 2-ranked Oklahoma City. In the four years through 1989, the oil bust drove prices there down 32% after inflation; now a rebound in energy prices and service industries figures to boost the median Oklahoma City homestead to $62,300 by early 1993, a 5.1% gain after inflation. Still, prices would remain 3.7% below their 1985 peak of $64,700. The losers include several of the once hot markets of the West. For example, in Seattle, the darling of 1989 (up 13% after inflation that year), the median price of an existing home fell 3% through the first quarter of '91 and may barely keep pace with inflation over the next two years. Riverside/San Bernardino, Calif. also figures to burn out. After a sizzling 12.2% gain in 1989, prices in that metro area 50 miles east of Los Angeles dropped 4.1% last year and could be headed for a 2.3% after-inflation dip by 1993, the worst projected performance on our table. The three-year slide, triggered by defense industry cutbacks, would wipe out more than half of the area's 1989 gain. Easy come, easy go.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: Source: The WEFA Group CAPTION: NO CAPTION