Predictions always make me uneasy. If they're correct I want them to be true right away. If they're inaccurate, I hate the false hope, but I've always felt pretty confident about the real estate market in Philadelphia.

Our market doesn't get the benefit of the huge wall street salaries that Manhattan has, nor the large compensation earned by entertainers and the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, so our peaks are not stratospheric, but our valleys are not as deep either. And obviously, our recoveries come earlier as well.

Recently Smart Money published an article about entitles "Home Prices: Now for the Good News" which had the following information;

Philadelphia bashers like to note how the city doesn’t quite keep pace with its northeastern neighbors New York and Boston. When it comes to real estate, that may be a good thing. While prices in the Big Apple and Beantown soared during the bubble years from 2003 to 2006, the City of Brotherly Love charted slow and steady growth. Over the past year, Philadelphia prices have stayed stable, while New York and Boston suffered small declines. And only 7 percent of Philly-area homeowners sold for a loss in the past year, according to Zillow—well below the national average of almost 24 percent.

The region did see some overbuilding, but employers such as pharmaceutical and other health care companies are drawing an influx of newcomers to the suburbs.

That’s especially true in Collegeville, a former bedroom community 30 minutes northwest of Philly’s city center that is now home to operations of both Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline, with mutual fund giant Vanguard just a few towns down the road. So named for the leafy campus of Ursinus College, Collegeville offers multi-acre horse farms and country estates for executive types, with more quaint accommodations in town for tweedy academics. Prudential Fox & Roach, a brokerage with about 4,000 agents in greater Philadelphia, says Collegeville prices are up 16 percent this year. “We are getting a lot of lowball offers, but we are negotiating them up,” says realtor Megan Goldstein. Other Philly suburbs are benefiting from the more traditional migration of young families from the city center. The Boyds, the couple who sold their house in town at a profit, are using the proceeds to buy a four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home in a new development in Skippack, Pa.

So it seems that once again, a third party source is telling people that Philadelphia's real estate market is a good bet - And that now is probably a good time to get out there and buy-

Its nice to be validated....