Thread: Americans Fear Home Price Drop Accelerating

Americans Fear Home Price Drop Accelerating

Friday, March 20, 2009 10:20 AM

NEW YORK -- Americans fear home prices will drop more sharply in the coming year, despite government efforts to resuscitate the battered real estate sector, according to a poll released on Friday.

U.S. homeowners surveyed by Reuters and University of Michigan predicted their home values would fall by 2.2 percent in the year ahead, the biggest anticipated decline in the past few years.

This predicted decline in March was steeper than the expected average fall of 1.9 percent in February.

Concerns that home value depreciation will intensify underscored the severe damage to consumer psychology stemming from the bursting of the housing bubble, heavy losses in the stock market and massive job losses.

If consumers, who account for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, stay jittery about home prices, it will diminish the chance of the recession, the worst in decades, ending this year.

In the event of home prices rebounding, Americans downgraded the extent of future price rises, according to the survey.

"Even after the decline ends, the plunge in home prices has been so steep that it will be years before these concerns are completely erased and the negative wealth drag on spending growth disappears," said survey director Richard Curtin.

The average annual five-year expected gain among homeowners surveyed slipped to 1.9 percent in March, the smallest in the past two years and compared with the 2.4 percent rise seen last month.

U.S. home prices have tumbled more than 26 percent since their peak almost three years ago, according to Standard Poor's/Case-Shiller indexes.

A less gloomy aspect of the survey showed fewer homeowners saw a drop in the value of their homes in March. The share of these homeowners fell to 56 percent from 63 percent in February.

But it is too early to tell whether this decline portends a turnaround in housing. "That insignificant improvement hardly constitutes a turning point," Curtin said.

http://moneynews.newsmax.com/economy/ho ... 94239.html

Illegals moving into neighborhood, foreclosures, and lost of jobs... Deport all undocumented immigrants and their anchor babies.

If home prices are dropping why are homebuilders going to Congress asking for their own Bailout? If we bail them out they will just hire a bunch more illegal construction workers and propel us into another housing bubble!

Originally Posted by vmonkey56

Illegals moving into neighborhood, foreclosures, and lost of jobs... Deport all undocumented immigrants and their anchor babies.

Just change the rules as they are in ALL other countrys in the world

To be born Mexican you must have a Mexican mother or father........

That would slow BABYs for American birth certificate tourism as well....

OH as for the decline

I guess it will be a buyers market soon and time to use my GIBILL

In a capitalist society, an asset is worth whatever someone is willing and able to pay for it. Housing prices have been out of whack with incomes for over a decade. The only way to get middle class people into homes in recent years was exotic, hinky, and ultimately impossible, financing plans. The price rollback American housing will need to see will put to shame anything Wal Mart ever came up with.