Omaha, Neb., home to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway company, has weathered the recession better than any other city in the nation, according to Forbes magazine.

So what’s this Midwestern city’s winning formula? Forbes said Omaha had a 1.3 percent gross metropolitan product growth rate in the last year, a low foreclosure rate and a 5 percent unemployment rate – half of the national rate of 10 percent.

Omaha also has a strong agricultural sector and growing biofuels industry, and it is home to 30 insurance companies and regional banks like Mutual of Omaha.

Forbes ranked the rate of economic recovery of the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas based on five categories: unemployment rate, GMP (a measure of the size of a city’s economy), foreclosures, home prices and sales rates. Overall, cities that are on the road to recovery have diversified industry and a relatively stable housing base.

Rounding out the top 10 are San Antonio, Texas; Austin, Texas; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Rochester, N.Y.; Houston, Texas; and Raleigh, N.C.

Click here to see the full list.

The Obama administration announced recently it will expand its $50 billion housing aid plan to help more homeowners avoid foreclosure.
The changes, aimed at homeowners who do not qualify for other aid, will make it easier for them to sell their homes for less than the cost of the mortgage or transfer ownership to the lender.

The president’s Making Homes Affordable program, launched in March, reimburses mortgage companies that modify borrowers’ loans to help homeowners make the payments and keep their homes. To qualify for a modified loan, borrowers must provide proof of income and a letter stating why they need help.

Companies have made more than 55,000 offers to modify borrowers’ loans, according to the Associated Press.

Some mortgage brokers complain the loan modification plan is too complicated.

“Our experience at the ground level has been, so far, frustrating,” Michael van Zalingen, director of homeownership at Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, a counseling group, told the AP. Some mortgage company employees are either steering borrowers away from the plan or are unaware of it, he said.

Not all homeowners will qualify for loan modification. But Faith Schwartz, executive director of Hope Now, a mortgage industry group formed in response to the foreclosure crisis, told the AP, “This is a very well-thought out plan. People have to be a little bit patient.”

The recent revisions are meant to help borrowers who owe significantly more on their mortgages than they can afford to pay and so don’t qualify for the loan revision program.

In the first quarter of 2009, foreclosure filings topped 800,000, according to RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed properties.