Searching for the places with good home values? Some of them may surprise you

If you were searching for pockets of optimism in the housing market, where would you look? Easy guesses would be to avoid Detroit or any other city with a domestic auto plant.

Then there are the foreclosure gulches of Central and Southern California. Cities there will take a long time to recover. Too many homes were sold at bubble prices to people with dodgy finances. Most short lists of regions likely to experience prolonged housing slumps include Las Vegas, Phoenix, and South Florida. You may be able to find bargains, but that doesn't mean you will achieve any gains for years to come.

Not everyone cares about home-price appreciation, though. People still want to live in safe, stable neighborhoods where services abound, schools are decent, and they are surrounded by educated, caring neighbors. To many people, that's an intangible and worthwhile investment.

Where can you be reasonably assured your housing investment won't evaporate? You need to gauge a home's risks, which many buyers neglect to do.

How many foreclosures are in the neighborhood you like? How many nearby homes have been repossessed by banks? Are average home prices falling? The bottom line: What are the chances your property will depreciate? Most agents can't tell you this, so you have to do the work yourself.

Some of the most durable areas experienced less bubble appreciation, show fewer foreclosures, and have residents with higher average incomes. A few of these havens might surprise you.

The Connecticut areas of Bridgeport-Stamford, Hartford, and New Haven are most resilient, according to HomeSmartreports.com, which measures "collateral risk," or the chance you will lose money on a purchase. Also on the "least-risky" list are Boston, Essex County, and Worcester; Honolulu; Bethesda-Gaithersburg, Md; Edison, N.J.; New York/Nassau-Suffolk county; Albuquerque; Seattle; and El Paso, Texas.

Neighborhood stability is almost always anchored by employment and above-average wealth and education. The absence of speculators and buyers with adjustable-rate mortgages also makes a difference.

Michael Ela, president of HomeSmartreports.com, says California "was rampant with speculators who got caught in the worst possible vise; many bought at the top of the market with variable-rate loans." Although he doesn't have the data to prove it, Ela says the Northeast has been traditionally risk-averse.

But don't mistake preserving home equity and stability with reaping future gains. The Northeast and Hawaii are already far above the US price average. You might find better overall value and growth opportunities in lower-priced places such as Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio in Texas; Jackson, Miss.; and Pittsburgh, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

John F. Wasik is a Bloomberg News columnist. He can be reached at jwasik@bloomberg.net.