Not All Boom Counties Cough Up Gains In Recession

MIKE BAKER

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — In the state capital's downtown core, $500,000 decorative street lights beam down on bustling crowds who've come to dine and play along a recently revitalized pedestrian plaza.

A few states to the south, the lamp posts shine largely on empty lots in a subdivision outside Orlando where only a third of the 95 planned homes have been built.

Wake County, N.C., and Lake County, Fla., shared the spoils of the real estate surge as two of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties of this decade, until the recession hit and their paths diverged.

Most of the places on that list, including Lake County, coughed up their quick gains. The AP Economic Stress Index — a score based on a county's unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy rates — shows that the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties have, as a whole, fared worse than the national average since the start of the recession.

Yet 42 of those 100 counties are bucking that boom-then-doom trend, including one west of Des Moines, some in northern Virginia and the Texas counties outside Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, according to the AP's analysis.