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When it comes to cities that offer bang for the buck, Greensboro and High Point might not be among those that come to mind.

But Forbes begs to differ.

In a list called America’s Best Bang-For-The-Buck Cities, the magazine recently ranked the Greensboro-High Point area as the 30th best in the nation. That’s out of a survey of the country’s top 100 metro areas.

The Raleigh-Cary area ranked 21st, and Charlotte came in at 56th.

Greensboro-High Point tied with the Albany, Schenectady and Troy, N.Y. area.

“(The) end result is we are not a flashy market but one ... built on a reasonable foundation,” Keith Debbage , a geography professor at UNCG, wrote in an e-mail. “We just have to stop comparing ourselves to the more skilled, affluent markets down the road in the Triangle area.”

To find cities that offer the most bang for the buck, Forbes looked at a variety of factors: foreclosures as a percentage of housing units, low home vacancies, unemployment rates, a three-year job growth forecast, a three-year home price forecast, housing affordability, median real estate taxes and median travel time to work.

The magazine ranked the metro areas in each of these categories and then averaged the scores to get the final rankings.

The top three were Omaha, Neb.-Council Bluffs, Iowa ; Little Rock, Ark. ; and Jackson, Miss. ranked one , two , three .

“These are sleepy little markets that have fallen under the radar screen in terms of turbulence in housing,” Kermit Baker , a senior researcher at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies , told Forbes.com . “They didn’t go though much of a boom or bust.”

The Triad also avoided the extreme impacts of the boom and bust cycles that predominated in California , Nevada and Florida.

“We also are more resilient than we realize in terms of our affordable house prices, low taxes, reasonable commute times — even though the performance of our local economy leaves much to be desired,” Debbage said. “All that said, mission No. 1, 2 and 3 is jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com