Though the United States is grinding its way through a slow economic recovery, many parts of the country are still experiencing high unemployment and low housing prices. Experts are concerned that some of the hardest-hit areas have not yet bottomed out in terms of real estate prices. News like that is preventing many would-be buyers from shopping for a new home. Those same experts, however, acknowledge that there is one region in particular that didn’t suffer the same dramatic setbacks as the rest of the country.

According to real estate expert Barbara Corcoran, there’s a swath of states from Texas up through North Dakota where the decline in home prices was more tempered. These states were less involved in the subprime mortgage market, and as a result, housing prices didn’t increase as quickly or as significantly as in other parts of the country. Consequently, houses in these states also depreciated less, which means the market has been more stable overall throughout the housing crisis. As a result, though prices may rebound slower here than in other parts of the country, they are also much less likely to fall any further than they already have.

This is good news for both buyers and sellers. Sellers can trust that the current fair market value of their homes won’t decrease anymore. This means they don’t have to be in a rush to sell their homes, but it also means that real estate agents and brokers are better able to determine what fair market value actually is. For the past two years, even in places like Texas, home values have fluctuated dramatically, making it difficult for agents and brokers to figure out what the market would bear in terms of selling prices. The ability to price your homepetitively increases greatly when home prices stabilize, as they seem to have done through the central states.

It’s possible that this settling down of prices will encourage more homeowners to put their properties on the market. Some are going to wait until prices actually begin increasing, but some homeowners are happy enough to know values won’t go down anymore, and that assurance may be the only thing that prevented a “For Sale” sign from adorning their lawns.

At the same time, potential buyers can feel more at ease about purchasing homes, because they don’t have to be quite as concerned about property values declining significantly in the next year or two. Because prices seem to have reached a plateau, there’s less risk that a homeowner will end up with more mortgage than property value.

Of course, the caveat to all of this is that the future is unpredictable. Very few people foreshadowed the financial crisis and housing bust that happened two years ago. Though that is a rather extreme example of uncertainty, it is worth remembering. No one can know for sure what will happen next year, or the year after that. Despite that, all indications seem to point to a housing market in the central states that has leveled off enough to make the buying and selling of homes appealing again.

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