Housing market forecast lists Charleston in top 25

We're certainly not a Las Vegas, Detroit or Miami.

That's what local home- owners and real estate industry players can take comfort in when lamenting Charleston's weakened housing market. Comparing market conditions with cities in far worse positions, in fact, makes our local problems seem much smaller.

To that effect, Charleston recently was cited as one of the top 25 Strongest Housing Markets by Forbes magazine, which asked Moody's Economy.com to create a list of areas that are nearest to recovery. The group looked at metro areas with populations higher than 500,000.

The analysis forecast that the Lowcountry housing market will hit the bottom in late 2009 and that prices will fall by a margin of 1.1 percent before that time. (That prediction doesn't jibe with data from the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors, which suggests that, at least since 2007, home sales prices have fallen by roughly 3 percent.)

Charleston shared the honor with other Southern cities, including Columbia, Birmingham and Augusta. Clusters of real estate stability were found in Upstate New York in cities such as Rochester, Albany and Buffalo and throughout Texas in cities including San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and El Paso.

The analysis emphasized that the listed markets aren't immune from the current downturn. None of the cities is likely to see prices increase by the end of the year.

In storage

A local developer has picked a spot to polish up in the revitalizing Charleston Neck Area.

Quattlebaum Development Co. is on the brink of breaking ground for a new storage facility on Heriot Street. The 106,000-square foot facility, which will be managed by Extra Space Storage, could open as early as June.

Extra Space Storage has three other locations in the Charleston area.

The 1.4-acre site used to house the brick Craig's Seafood building, which has been torn down.

Quiet Heriot Street's profile recently was elevated by the neighboring Magnolia urban infill development, a proposal that aims to turn 126 acres of previously polluted land along the Ashley River into a mix of offices, shops and as many as 4,400 homes. Magnolia developers plan to route the future neighborhood's traffic over a marsh and through Heriot to link up to U.S. Interstate 26.

Reach Katy Stech at 937-5549 or kstech@postand courier.com.