Five Turnaround Real Estate Markets

Smokestacks, steel mills, oil refineries, paper-mill aromas. Old economy, blue collar, poor education, high crime. Old infrastructure, layers of industrial grime, worn-out downtown centers. Middle-of-nowhere locations too far from favored regional cities to be relevant.

Not the kind of places you or I would buy real estate, right?

Maybe not. But a number of places across the U.S. have visibly escaped their industrial past and the economic malaise that went with it.

As a Millionaire Zone real estate investor, I like to look at where the puck is going. So I look for places once avoided but now embraced by the upwardly mobile and the so-called "creative class" of entrepreneurs and new-economy workers. ...