CHEYENNE - Here's another sign of Wyoming's tight housing market: Census figures released Monday show that the number of vacant homes for sale in the state remains much lower than the regional and national averages.

Wyoming tied with Hawaii and Oklahoma for the nation's ninth-lowest supply of vacant homes for sale over the first three months of the year, according to the census figures.

The 1.7 percent rate of vacant homes for sale in Wyoming was well below the West's rate of 3.2 percent and the national rate of 2.9 percent, which was a 52-year high.

State economist Wenlin Liu said many people who moved to Wyoming to work in the energy industry in recent years bought homes, helping offset a surge in home construction.

"The new homes on the market have increased tremendously in the past five years," Liu said. "Finally in 2007, we had a very strong population increase - a 2 percent population increase - which was the highest since 1982."

Recently, though, Wyoming's real estate market has tapered off. Liu said the number of people moving to the state has declined and construction has slackened, with residential building permits issued statewide decreasing from 650 in the first quarter of 2007 to 434 in the first quarter of this year.

But Liu said that while the real estate market has held steady in places including Gillette, Rock Springs, Cheyenne and Laramie, it remains robust in places including Sheridan.

Even where the market has softened, there is so far no sign of a glut. Kevin Bromley, a Casper real estate agent and president of the Wyoming Association of Realtors, said builders in his area saw demand getting soft and scaled back construction.

"They were noticing that the number of homes that were built each year weren't getting sold," he said.

He said builders' restraint, while limiting supply, has shored up prices in Casper.

The subprime mortgage crisis hasn't directly affected Wyoming nearly as much as some other places. But Liu said the resulting credit crunch has no doubt affected Wyoming's real estate market by making mortgages more difficult to obtain for many people.

"Many people were probably easily qualified to buy a home a few years ago, but now the credit criteria are probably higher," Liu said.

Of Wyoming's neighboring states, Colorado's vacancy rate was the nation's fourth-highest at 3.9 percent. South Dakota's rate, 0.9 percent, was the nation's lowest. Nebraska's was 2.5 percent, Idaho's 3.1 percent, and Utah's 2.1 percent.