In its first Housing Market Recovery Index, RealtyTrac placed two New York State housing markets in the top three national metro housing markets “leading the real estate recovery.”

Rochester and the Albany-Schenectady-Troy metro markets ranked first and third, respectively, among national housing markets. The ranking was based on seven factors includingunemployment rate, percentage of underwater loans, foreclosure activity percentage change from peak, distressed sales percentage of total sales, institutional investors share of total sales, cash purchases share of total sales, and median home price percentage change from bottom. The factors were indexed for each market with national averages as a baseline, and all seven indexes were averaged to calculate a total recovery index.

The Buffalo-Niagara metro ranked 22nd, while the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown market ranked 31st. New York-Northern New Jersey was ranked number 68 on the 100-market list.