Pending home sales — a forward-looking measure of home buying — dropped 7.6% in January after a revised 0.8% increase in December, according to data from the National Association of Realtors released last week. Existing home sales fell 7.2% in January, the group reported last month, while the national median existing-home price was $164,700, unchanged from a year earlier.

What's more, average national home prices for the fourth quarter of 2010 are forecast to fall more than 8% over the same period in 2009, according to Moody's data.

But a few small pockets around the country might see strength. Moody's forecasts home prices performing best in five metro areas: Kennewick, Wash., (an increase of 3.96% for fourth quarter 2010 vs. year-earlier period); Fairbanks, Ala. (up 3.18%); Charleston, S.C. (up 3.07%); Corvallis, Ore. (up 2.96%); and Anchorage, Ala. (up 2.72%). These five markets are culled from a model Moody's Economy.com that uses Fiserv/Case-Shiller metro indexes as well as data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It looks at data from 384 metropolitan areas in the country. The most influential factors for the forecast include household income growth, population growth, the jobless rate and the user cost of housing.

Granted, these increases are modest. But given that some parts of the country were pummeled by 40% declines in home values, any number that's positive stands out. “It shows those markets have done exceptionally better than others,” says Ross DeVol, director of regional economics at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank in Santa Monica, Calif.

These metros share a few important characteristics. For one, they're all fairly small: None has a population more than 700,000, according to the Census, whose latest population estimate data is from July 2008.

There was also a substantially less-severe decline in employment and in their local economies overall. “Most of these markets did not have a big boom — they did not have a lot of new home construction, so you didn't get a lot of excess supply. You didn't get prices shooting up above national averages for the most part,” says DeVol.

And another key factor: These areas all experienced positive net in-migration during the recession, meaning more people moved in than moved out. “That's very important for the housing market, DeVol says.

Here's a look at five areas with (relatively) bright prospects in 2010.

Kennewick is one of four cities (also including Richland, West Richland, and Pasco) referred to as the Tri-Cities, and is southeast of Hanford Site, which plays a big role in the region's economy.

Hanford Site is home to nine former nuclear reactors and their associated processing facilities — and the stimulus package allocated $1.96 billion to Hanford for clean-up efforts. That's in addition to the $2 billion in annual funding the site receives regularly for clean-up, which has been underway since 1989 and will continue through at least 2050, says Geoffrey Tyree, a spokesman for the Department of Energy's Hanford Site. As of January, the DOE estimates it has saved or created the equivalent of more than 1,500 full-time jobs. Clean-up work involves demolishing facilities, constructing groundwater treatment systems, remediating waste sites and upgrading aging infrastructure.

Another large employer in the area is the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in neighboring Richland. PNNL is one of the Department of Energy's 10 national laboratories. (The lab works with both energy and defense departments to set up radiation portal monitoring systems in the U.S. and around the world.)

Fairly stable employment accounts, at least in part, for why the real estate market has remained stable here. “It's reasonable to expect that home prices are rising — at least moderately,” says DeVol.

Alaska's economy has lost some ground during the recession, but much less so than the rest of the country — an important reason why two of the state's metropolitan areas — Fairbanks and Anchorage — are at the top of the list.

“Our job losses have been much smaller and our economy in general is quite different from the national economy. We have a different story,” says Neal Fried, an economist in Alaska's Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

For the most part, Fried says, these two communities didn't have a colossal real estate overhang that's put a burden on a lot of the country's economy — both a real and psychological one.

Also important to the fundamental economies in both cities is their military presence. Anchorage has Fort Richardson, a U.S. army base, as well as the Elmendorf Air Force Base; Fairbanks has Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks is a large university — which usually has a stabilizing effect on a region's employment picture. “Our universities aren't struggling like others. It's not like California, where they're cutting or furloughing employees,” says Fried.

Charleston experienced a decline in employment last year, but not as severe as other places in the country, says DeVol.

One mitigating factor that's giving a big boost to employment here — besides its naval weapons station — is Boeing (BA: 69.11*, -1.89, -2.66%). The Chicago-based aerospace and defense company is building a massive facility for the Dreamliner in North Charleston. The Dreamliner, a commercial airplane, is currently assembled in Everett, Wash. Boeing hopes to have the new facility online in 2012. That's the second Boeing facility in the area: Last summer it bought a factory in North Charleston that makes the rear fuselage sections for the Dreamliner.

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