CLARKSVILLE, Tenn.— Sometimes Tim Wells felt like the only man left on his street.

Thousands of soldiers were deployed out of Fort Campbell, Ky., just a few miles away, and homes in Wells' subdivision were sitting empty. But a few months later the soldiers began to return and, one by one, the homes were quickly purchased.

"They all started selling, boom-boom-boom, right down the line, as people rotated in," said Wells, who was a civilian contractor working on the base. "It was a pretty clear pattern."

While overall national home prices and sales are down, there are pockets in the U.S. doing well. Among them are military towns dominated by big bases, helped by steady wartime employment and by more moderate increases in values and less reckless lending than many boom areas saw during the bubble.

The Associated Press reviewed housing data in four states with big military bases and found nearby communities fared better than national averages. Some towns have even seen average home prices rise, bolstered by increased recruitment and steady defense-related employment during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even where prices are down, the bases still help provide plenty of people looking to buy. In the Florida Panhandle, where a saturated housing market saw sluggish sales last year, soldiers at Eglin Air Force Base said the downturn has made it easier for them to purchase homes in an area where demand is bolstered by Gulf Coast beaches.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Samual Dickerson and his wife moved to the area four years ago. They thought about buying a home then but the prices were high and few homes were available.

"It was unrealistic. The prices were going up about $10,000 every month," Dickerson said.

That changed with the downturn that saw the median home sales price in the county around Eglin fall 7 percent in the second quarter from the year before to $232,000. An average number was not available from the local real estate database.

Dickerson and his wife have decided to buy a home this year even though it's likely he will get orders to move to another base because they like the area and hope to return.

The AP looked at sales figures from selected smaller communities near large bases in the Southeast, which has a major military presence, and in North Dakota, away from the balmier climates that might attract new residents.

In the case of Clarksville, the largest city near the sprawling Army post that straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky line, more than 30,000 soldiers assigned to the base rotate in and out regularly. Many come with families in tow or return from a deployment looking for a quiet place to call home in or around the city of about 113,000.

When Wells got a job transfer, he had no trouble selling his home and closed on the deal in August.

"From the time we listed it, we got an offer in eight days," he said.

Not bad, considering the National Association of Realtors estimates that nationally it will take nearly 10 months at the current rate of sales to work through the entire housing inventory.

Average home prices in the U.S. fell a record 4.8 percent in the second quarter compared with a year ago, with some areas like California and Nevada falling between 14 and 16 percent, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. It uses data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and includes more than 5 million repeat sales transactions.

But in Clarksville, the average sales prices for single family homes increased about 6 percent, from $139,065 to $147,460 in the second quarter of 2008 compared to a year ago, according to the Clarksville Association of Realtors.

Military communities haven't totally avoided the problems in the housing market, and on average it's taking longer for home sellers to find a buyer. In Clarksville, homes sat on the market for an average of 96 days in the second quarter of 2008 compared to 65 days a year ago.

Valerie Hunter-Kelly, a Clarksville real estate agent whose husband is retired from the Army, caters to clients who are mostly Army families that move to the area.

"We have a fantastic market here," she said. "I do networking with agents across the country and we are very fortunate to have the market we have here. Our average sales price is actually going up."

In Fayetteville, N.C., a city of about 168,000 outside of Fort Bragg, sale prices are down slightly this year for new homes but higher for the larger stock of existing homes. Second quarter figures were unavailable, but for the year through Sept. 30 the average price for an existing home was up 5.2 percent to $130,355 from a year earlier while new home prices were down 1.7 percent to $204,910.