Region scores poorly in housing market health

Five Gulf Coast cities were ranked in the bottom third of WalletHub's nationwide 2015 Healthiest Housing Markets survey.

The personal finance website compared housing markets in 300 U.S. cities using 14 metrics. The list of metrics includes mortgage delinquencies, underwater homes, average days to sell, the number of bank-held homes, median home-price appreciation, percentage of homes selling for a gain, foreclosure rate, vacancy rate and building permit activity.

On that scale, the highest-ranked Gulf Coast city on the list is Cape Coral, ranked 204th in a tie with Pueblo, Colo. Clearwater was 219, followed by Tampa at 230, St. Petersburg at 252 and Lakeland at 278. The only other Florida city to score higher on the ranking than Cape Coral was Boca Raton, at 194.

The website also generated a separate score for the affordability and economic environment of each area. For that it looked at home price and maintenance costs as a percentage of income, population and job growth and the unemployment rate.

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