Top 5 Smart Cities: We Made the List!

Top 5 Smart Cities: We Made the List!

Cambridge-Newton-Framingham market made the Top 5 Smart Cities list!  Read more to find out exactly what a "Smart City" is.

Smart cities are a new style of city providing sustainable growth and designed to encourage healthy economic activities that reduce the burden on the environment while improving the QoL (Quality of Life) of their residents.  A large number of experimental projects are currently being carried out around the globe in order to discover a core model for smart cities. Each of these projects is varied and diverse, with some considering energy and others considering EVs. However, the main aim should be to consider the lifestyles of the citizens, which in the end will determine the form the cities should take. Smart cities are not something that should be tackled by just governments and corporations and then presented to residents. The general public must also be actively involved in sharing their own ideas and helping to formulate the cities by throwing their own wisdom into the pot. That is what smart cities are all about.

Smart cities are hot. The local housing markets that will enjoy rising prices, new construction or both, are those that start the year with stronger job growth and fewer empty homes holding back the market. Based on these factors, along with other leading indicators, here are my top five cities to watch:

1. & 2.  Austin, TX, and Houston, TX. The bloom's not off the yellow rose of Texas. Steady job growth and a construction revival make Austin and Houston two of my five cities to watch. Texas isn't hung over from the housing boom like the other big states of the South and West, so there's little to hold back growth. Honorable mention to Fort Worth and San Antonio.

3.  San Jose, CA. Wasn't California at the center of the foreclosure crisis? Didn't prices there fall more than everywhere else in the country? Yup. But there's no such thing as the California housing market: California is almost as diverse as the U.S. Even though prices plummeted and foreclosures skyrocketed in inland California, the coast is another world. San Jose's perennially tight housing market makes it faster to bounce back. The San Jose market -- which includes most of Silicon Valley -- has rapid job growth and the lowest vacancy rate in the country.

4. Suburbs of Boston, MA. This Cambridge-Newton-Framingham market just west of Boston has a strong jobs engine and, like most of New England, missed the worst of the housing bubble. Honorable mention goes to Worcester, one step further west, and Boston's northern suburbs around Peabody. These areas all benefit from offering more bang for the buck than crowded, expensive Boston: this is because most people looking to move are searching in more suburban or smaller areas than where they live now.

5. Rochester, NY. Prices -- which fell little during the boom -- are stable, and the economy has weathered blow after blow and is expanding.

We have a team of experts to help you with your real estate transaction and assisting you in finding the Wellesley home of your dreams.  Call Christine Norcross for more information – cell 781-929-4994 or to research the Boston neighborhoods, visit my Wellesley Real Estate or Newton Real Estate websites.  Search for homes HERE.  We have a team, Christine Norcross & Partners, at William Raveis and we can help you find your dream home in the Wellesley Real Estate market – Natick, Newton, Needham, Wellesley, Wayland, Weston and more.