With a new master plan in place, called the Framework for Regional Growth, the Buffalo/Niagara Falls, New York region is poised for economic growth as they face the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

Business leaders helped create and promote passage the new economic blueprint, which is the first master plan written for the region in more than 30 years. The Buffalo Niagara Partnership, a consortium of business groups in the region, was the driving force behind the initiative, which "strategically focuses development in the areas where infrastructure already exists, halting our long-running trend of growing outward geographically while shrinking in population," according to a report form the Partnership published earlier this year.

Whatever the plan calls for seems to be working as home prices have continually increased in the Buffalo/Niagara area, according to the Buffalo Niagara Association of Realtors. Single-family homes have again increased in value for the fourth quarter of 2007 at more than 9 percent to a median price of $105,000.

Prices have increased steadily in Buffalo and surrounds year after year, even during the latest national down turn. In the last three years, appreciation rates increased at 5, 11 and now 9 percent, year of year, demonstrating a healthy real estate market in a community that has most recently taken economic growth seriously.