Median home price: $439,300
Just like its residents, New York's housing market has proven itself to be resilient during tough times. Home prices, especially in Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn, have held up well during the bust and should continue to do so, says Jonathan Miller, president of New York appraisal firm, Miller Samuel.
All told, the metro area's housing market is down a little less than 20% from the peak set in the third quarter of 2007, according to Wells Fargo. That's considerably better than the nation as a whole, where prices have dropped by more than a third.
In Manhattan, you won't get much more than a modest one-bedroom condo for $440,000. But you can get a lot more home for that sum in the outer borough neighborhoods and suburbs.
New York has two things helping it weather the economic storm: an acute shortage of land to build on and an ability to attract young people. On average, there are 28,000 New Yorkers crammed into each square mile of the five boroughs -- and the people keep coming.
Young graduates flock to the city for high-paying jobs in finance, as well as lower-paying jobs in the arts and other industries.
In addition, New York University was named the number three dream school for students in the Princeton Review's
2011College Hopes and Worries Survey. And then there are companies like UBS, the giant Swiss bank, which is moving back to Manhattan from Stamford, Conn., because it has become too difficult to recruit young talent: They all want to live in Manhattan.
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