Need another reason to invest in real estate in Santa Barbara County? According to Fiserv Case-Shiller data, the Santa Barbara metro area will be one of the top 15 housing markets in the United States for the next five years. Annualized growth from 2012 – 2017 is expected to exceed 8%. For a frame of reference, home prices nationwide are only expected to increase by 3.3% over the next five years. In fact, only five metro areas ranked higher than Santa Barbara in projected annualized growth. Yahoo! Finance ranked the top 15 cities by a combination of projected changes in home prices, median home prices and household income, unemployment rates and changes in home prices since their peak. Read more here...