5 Best Housing Markets for the Next Five Years

If you're looking to move to Los Altos, there are 135 properties listed for sale there on Realtor.com. Prices range from $340,000 for a one-bedroom condo to $13 million for a 4-acre estate.

Second-best market: San Francisco
Expected five-year price gain: 15.9%

Sometimes called the "Wall Street of the West," San Francisco's large financial sector, seven Fortune 500 companies and thriving tech industry underpin the 7.6-million-person metro area's economy and housing market.

Large employers that call San Francisco home range from Wells Fargo(WFC) to Craigslist. The 25,000-student San Francisco State University also adds to local housing demand that Colpitts expects will increase in the next few years.

"A rich, diverse cultural mix of people has transformed the greater Bay Area into a world-class city to make home," he says.

Realtor.com has some 1,800 San Francisco homes for sale, from a $99,000 fire-damaged teardown to a $38 million eight-bedroom estate.

No. 1 best market: Miami
Expected five-year price gain: 18.7%

Long the poster child for South Florida's housing bust and foreclosure crisis, Miami gets the top spot in HousingPredictor.com's study because the 2.5 million-population metro area's real estate market has finally begun to turn around.

Media list prices already rose 15.5% over the past year on Realtor.com, and Colpitts thinks the recovery has just begun -- fueled partly by investors from Latin America and other foreign locales.

"Miami is an international designation for vacationers and has become a world-class resort community, attracting home and condo purchasers from all over the world," he says. "If there's ever been a time to buy housing in Miami in this decade, chances are this is it."