Houston is hot.

High rise Galleria area condos are selling, Chinatown homes are moving and, generally, home prices are up.

Some thanks goes to the influx of foreign buyers looking for bargains.

And give credit to the town's strong energy-based oil economy, its lure as a corporate relocation destination, and its second home market attraction.

Perhaps most important is the yet-to-be realized, underlying potential. During the boom, the southeastern Texan market never went hog wild with skyrocketing home prices, like other now-deflated major metro markets.

That means there's room to zoom.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight found home prices in the Texan town up 4.38 percent in the first quarter this year, compared to a year earlier, but up only 26 percent during the past five years.

That's a more sustainable rate of home price appreciation, which also makes the market more attractive to investors and owner-occupants alike who've shied from over-grown, over-priced markets elsewhere in the greater Southwest and Western U.S.

According to the Houston Association of Realtors, sales of single-family homes in June were up in seven and down in 34 of the town 41 real estate market regions, compared to a year earlier. The median home price was up in 18 out of 41 regions. Overall, the median price on single-family detached homes in June was up 1.3 percent from a year earlier.

Experts with their feet on the ground -- your friendly, neighborhood Houston area real estate agents -- also give the market high marks.

Agents reporting to RealtyTimes' Market Conditions Report say the market is leaning toward a buyer's market and they rate it about a 2 in a 1-to-5 market where 1 is the strongest buyer's market and a 5 is the strongest seller's market.

However, agents indicate Houston may be a buy-now-or-lose-it-later market because even as buyers rule, prices are rising.

Houston real estate agents give the market a 3.5 on a home price scale where 1 indicates prices are falling hard and 5 indicates prices are taking off.

Now if they could only outlaw hurricanes.

Published: July 28, 2008

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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.