Move over Utah.

You aren't the only housing market to get a cozy warm feeling from a neighboring state's hot housing market.

Forget that it's one of the nation's Top 10 regions most likely to be hit by a major hurricane, according to Sperling's BestPlaces.Net, the Biloxi-Gulfport, Mississippi, metro area is also likely to be hit by a housing boom.

Just as Californians apparently aren't fearing any earthquake, developers are ignoring risks of the perfect storm and are jumping at the opportunity to cash in on the growing shortage of land on Florida's panhandle.

Earlier this month, in the third Mississippi Development Authority meeting to discuss coastal development, a poll of participants revealed as many as 70 condo projects under development or discussion in the Biloxi-Gulfport region.

According to the Sun Herald in Biloxi, "If you start at the bridge in Biloxi and you go west, virtually every commercial property on the coast is under some kind of option or being talked about today about some kind of condo development," said Don Hooper, an executive vice president of Wachovia Bank in Jacksonville, Florida, who was invited by the authority.

The Herald reported Hooper said he gets three to five calls a week from developers from Destin and Panama City, Florida, looking to build on Mississippi's Coast.

In Panama City, high-density condos, many of them rental vacation developments as high as 23 stories, have all but erased the view of the beach. Hooper told the Herald 19,0000 units are under development in Panama City for prices in the half-million dollar range for 1,000 square foot condos -- three times what they were three years ago.

The Biloxi-Gulfport area is smack dab in the middle of a 60-mile stretch of Mississippi gulf coast front, just west of a smaller coastal swath that includes Mobile, Alabama, and the Mobile Bay. The bay is adjacent to the western tip of Florida's panhandle.

"The condo market is rapidly growing all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast," Gulfport-based Coldwell Banker-Alfonso Realty, Inc.'s Pat Starnes reported to RealtyTimes' Market Conditions for the Biloxi-Gulfport region.

"Proximity to Keesler Air Force Base, dockside gaming and entertainment, and a growing tourist attraction keeps Biloxi as a great location in which to live," Starnes said.

Just two years ago, the Biloxi-Gulfport area was one of the nation's worst housing markets, suffering a 6 percent drop in prices from the first quarter 2002 to the same period in 2003, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Today, when it comes to housing markets, the Biloxi-Gulfport metro area is the jewel of the bayou.

According to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's (OFHEO) Home Price Index, based on repeat sales and refinancings, home price growth during the last quarter is stronger in Biloxi-Gulfport (1.31 percent) than both Mobile, Alabama (minus 1.31 percent), and New Orleans, Louisiana (0.38 percent), indicating it may be about to over take New Orleans as the hottest East South Central coastal town.

New Orleans' home price appreciation for the past year ending in the first quarter was 7.6 percent, compared to 6.03 percent for Biloxi-Gulfport and 2.32 percent for Mobile.

The Biloxi-Gulfport region is already doing better, on the average, than the entire East South Central census division (comprised of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama), as tracked by OFHEO. The region has seen home price appreciation at only 1.02 percent for the first quarter (compared to 1.31 percent for Biloxi-Gulfport) and 5.40 percent (compared to 6.03 percent for Biloxi-Gulfport) for the past year.

The Biloxi-Gulfport region also holds its own nationally, ranking, in home price appreciation, 160 out of 256 metro areas ranked by OFHEO.

NAR sets median prices based on sales of existing homes and, by its calculations, appreciation is twice the OFHEO figure, even as home prices remain relatively affordable -- so far.

In the past year, the median price of homes in the area grew almost 13 percent from $107,400 in the first quarter of 2004 to $121,100 in the first quarter of 2005, according to NAR.

"There are many great neighborhoods varying from new to very old and historic. High rise upscale condominiums are popping up along the beach front and selling extremely well," Biloxi-based Keller Williams Realty's Nancy Stone Bourgeois reported to RealtyTimes' Market Conditions.

In RealtyTimes' Market Conditions, Bourgeois and other real estate agents rate Biloxi-Gulfport not solidly in the seller's market arena, but by scoring it an average 3.3 out of 5 (where 1 is a full-blown buyer's market and 5 is a full-blown seller's market) they indicate the market is certainly on it's way to becoming a seller's paradise. The reporting real estate agents' average 3.7 price rating (where 1 indicates prices are plummeting and 5 indicates prices are rising fast) is more indication the market is on the cusp of a boom.

"The Gulf Coast beaches and casinos are attracting investors and families from all across the country. New construction seems to be the most attractive," said Biloxi-based Keller Williams Realty's Joe McVey reporting to RealtyTimes' Market Conditions.

Published: June 17, 2005

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.