Analysts still are looking for a relatively mild downturn - but in some areas, things will get worse before they get better.
April 11 2007: 11:38 AM EDT
(Money Magazine) -- Major real estate forecasters are looking for prices to bounce along the bottom this year and next and fully recover by 2009.
"Once the correction from the boom works through, we'll see slow, steady growth," says Celia Chen, Economy.com's director of housing economics, who expects annual price gains of between 2 percent and 4 percent by 2009.
And on Wednesday, the National Association of Realtors said it expects its measure of home prices to fall this year for the first time since the group began tracking sales nearly 40 years ago.
Overall, her firm is predicting that the downturn that started in late 2005 will end up pushing median home prices down 8.7 percent nationwide by the time it ends in early 2008. The nationwide figures, of course, mask a great deal of local variation.
Regions that saw the greatest price appreciation (and speculation) during the boom, such as Florida, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego, are now taking the hardest hit - and will continue to do so until all the air is out of the bubble.
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