Home sales are on the rise in Pueblo, Colorado

— -- It's a happy holiday season for the housing market in Pueblo, Colo., because merry bells aren't the only bells that are ringing. Realtors are getting many calls from home buyers.

"I'm clearing 15 and 16 voice mails every three or four hours," says Kendall Curtis, president of Pueblo Association of Realtors. "Just eight months ago, we were lucky if the phone rang four or five times a day."

For more than a year, home buyers had been sitting on the fence, Curtis says. But since the presidential election, home sales are on their way back up.

Despite the national economic downturn, Pueblo's local businesses have been shoring up jobs, which boosts the housing market.

The local economy wasn't always so diverse. "Prior to 1980, we were a one-industry town," says Dan Centa, president of Pueblo Economic Development Corp.

Pueblo was founded around a steel mill, and when that industry hit hard times, many people lost their jobs. Pueblo learned its lesson.

Since then, it has provided incentives to attract businesses. Its diverse economy includes a Goodrich Aircraft Wheels and Brakes plant and Vesta Wind Systems, which is building the biggest turbine-tower factory in the world, Centa says.

Pueblo's housing market also attracts buyers from Fort Carson, an Army post situated southwest of Colorado Springs. The base is close enough for the soldiers to live in Pueblo, where home prices are lower than they are in Colorado Springs, Centa says.

As the mortgage crisis unfolded, Pueblo experienced tough times. But it wasn't as hard hit as cities in California and Florida, Curtis says. In part, that's because its home prices didn't surge, nor did they dramatically collapse. Prices fell 6% to 7%, he says.

There has been some overbuilding, but mostly in a nearby community, Pueblo West, Curtis says. And there have been some foreclosures. "But we're seeing investors gobble them up," he says.

Now, mortgage rates are low, and home prices are rising. "It's gotten a lot busier, and a lot of deals are closing," Curtis says. "But I want to be cautious, because everything could change tomorrow."