Twin Cities Rank No. 1 In Predicting Nat'l Housing Market

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- If you want to know what the national housing market looks like, just see how the Twin Cities is doing.

The Twin Cities landed at the top of Time's Crystal Ball Awards, which looked at which markets closely match the ups and downs of national home prices.

Minneapolis and St. Paul came in at No. 1 with a 0.79 correlation. The number ranges from negative 1 to 1. The higher the correlation, the stronger the prediction is for the national housing market.

Rounding out the rest of the top five:

• San Diego, Calif.
• West Palm Beach, Fla.
• Cape Coral-Fort Meyers, Fla.
• Ventura County, Calif.

Statistics show that the Twin Cities and national housing markets compared closely over the last 34 years.

Meanwhile, the worst cities for judging how the market will be were Baton Rouge, La. followed by Houston, San Antonio and Austin, Texas.