Things are looking up in the Bay Area for home builders, but for home buyers, the news remains pretty dismal.
That's the report from the National Association of Home Builders, which on Monday issued a list of metropolitan areas where the market for homes has improved, at least from the builders' perspective.
The NAHB just added San Francisco and San Jose to its list of metropolitan areas with improving markets. Yet San Francisco is the second least affordable city in the country, and San Jose is the eighth least affordable on a different NAHB ranking.
The "improving markets" index measures employment growth from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, housing price appreciation from Freddie Mac and single-family housing permit growth from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A metropolitan area must see improvement in all three measures for at least six consecutive months following those measures’ respective low points before being included on the improving markets list.