Atlanta among best places to buy a home

Atlanta is the 13th-best American city to buy a house, Forbes magazine said in a new ranking of U.S. metro areas.Forbes also determined average price per square foot of housing space decreased 1.1 percent in Atlanta between February and March of this year, and that transactions declined 7.5 percent between March 2008 and March 2009.“While the majority of the nation’s housing markets are still working toward a bottom, some cities are boasting fundamentals that make them good places to buy a home now,” Forbes reported this week.The Forbes rankings seem geared more toward each market’s current and future potential as a place to buy a home, since some of the cities at or near the top of the list are among those hardest hit by the recession.The report ranked the 25 largest U.S. metro areas on the basis of change in price per square foot, frequency of real-estate transactions, and how evenly distributed home-sales activity is in a metro area.Denver is the best city to buy a home. Phoenix was ranked No. 2, followed by Boston, San Diego and Los Angeles.Forbes listed Las Vegas, Cleveland, Seattle and Detroit at the bottom of the 25 cities.“There, distressed sales have kept home values down and buyers away,” Forbes said.Forbes drew its data from March 2009 RPX Monthly Housing Market Report, distributed by Radar Logic Incorporated, a New York-based derivatives firm.Source: Forbes & Atlanta Business Chronicle