Where you can live

Al's Morning Meeting had some links today on the housing bubble and predictions it's ending. Among them, the National Assn of Realtors article, and lists of city home values from MSN Money(House price appreciation by Metro area) and MSNBC (Hot housing markets).
Hottest of the hot markets? St. George, UT, and Naples, FL.

Coincidentally (or not), the Naples Daily News is doing a special report on affordable housing in the Naples area, Paradise: at what cost?. Is there such a thing? I recently read a local story about a company that had a call center in Naples and had to move it to Cleveland, TN, where their employees could actually afford to live.

The Daily News series includes readers' stories, chats, videos, and podcasts, and a searchable database. Some other Florida papers have been noted for similar projects recently (here , here) and more....

And, some other ways to help decide where you might want to live:

Pain at the Pump: Which Cities Hurt the Most, from BestPlaces.net. Considers cost of fuel plus commute distances and traffic congestion. Sprawl cities like Atlanta come out worst.

50 Smart Places to Live from Kiplinger. Best city: Nashville. Also: Ithaca, NY, despite being in 'the Finger Lakes boonies', and Asheville ('franchise-free downtown').

Blogger is having problems again today so I may not get these posts in for some time. Sometimes I miss having TypePad to post with (on my Herald blog), but then I remember how long it took Typepad to load and sometimes to post, and several outages there too....Blogger has not been much of a problem at all over the last couple years. But right now...aughhh!