CNNMoney.com > Small Business > Best Places to Launch

Fewest foreclosures
The housing bust has rippled throughout the economy, hurting small businesses in hard-hit areas. Here's where foreclosures are rarest.
Rank Metro area Foreclosure rate (1 per every X housing units) Population
1 Altoona, PA 14,033 125,174
2 Ithaca, NY 13,534 101,136
3 Williamsport, PA 8,981 116,670
4 Burlington, VT 8,066 208,460
5 Lawton, OK 7,870 111,772
6 Dubuque, IA 6,470 92,724
7 Lake Charles, LA 5,774 192,856
8 Utica, NY 5,441 293,790
9 Rapid City, SD 4,885 122,522
10 Jefferson City, MO 4,727 146,363
11 Waterloo, IA 4,701 164,220
12 Johnstown, PA 3,900 144,319
13 Lincoln, NE 3,625 295,486
14 Pascagoula, MS 2,901 153,100
15 Morgantown, WV 2,362 118,506
16 Bowling Green, KY 2,238 117,947
17 Texarkana, TX 2,128 135,509
18 Billings, MT 2,015 152,005
19 Hattiesburg, MS 1,666 140,781
20 Missoula, MT 1,635 107,320
21 Farmington, NM 1,616 122,500
22 Bismarck, ND 1,492 104,944
23 Owensboro, KY 1,456 112,762
24 Midland, TX 1,429 129,494
25 Logan, UT 1,392 125,070
Source: Housing data from RealtyTrac, for the first six months of 2009.
Best Places Winners
MAPS
Find your launch spot
Do you prefer a place that is: Small Medium Large
The factors that matter most to me are:
 Affordable wages  Few foreclosures
 Educated workers  Low housing costs
 Low crime  High local incomes
 A growing economy  Population growth
 Growing small business population

Video
Is your city great for entrepreneurs?
ireportTell us why: Low taxes? Talented workers? An active small business community? Send us your photos and videos, and you could be featured in our upcoming coverage of reader-picked Best Places to Launch. More
How we picked the Best Places
This year we partnered with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to find the 50 most business-friendly communities in America.

With help from Robert Fairlie, an economist and leading scholar of entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, we developed a methodology and sifted through such data on factors such as per capita income, hourly wages, workforce quality, crime rates, taxes and foreclosures. More

Comments? E-mail the editors
Data partners

This package was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Foreclosure data provided by RealtyTrac.

Housing price-to-income data provided by Moody's Economy.com.