This is what failure looks like.
Thought the housing crisis was over? Not quite.
Despite four years of falling prices and recent signs that they were finally bottoming out, homes are expected to lose still more value in many metro areas over the next year.
Parts of the country already pummeled by the housing crisis, like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami, will be hit hardest. But even some places that have rebounded or held up relatively well including New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. will suffer, too.
Thats the conclusion of economists who have been reducing their estimates for home prices as the outlook for the economic recovery has darkened. The number of homes for sale or headed for foreclosure is so high that they think prices will be even lower by next July.
Because housing is such an important engine of the economy, lower prices could dim the recovery. When home values fall and people have less equity, they tend to cut back on spending. And as prices decline, potential homebuyers stay on the sidelines, slowing sales even more.
Price drops of more than 10 percent are expected in the Phoenix, Miami and Las Vegas areas over the next year, according to Moodys Analytics. Those areas have already been scorched by 50 percent declines in home values.
Moodys predicts that other areas New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Tampa, Fla.; and Washington D.C. will see declines of 2 to 8 percent by next July.
Many analysts expect home prices to rise for a few months because a tax credit offered to homebuyers through April increased demand. But the gains probably wont last. By this time next year, Moodys expects prices in 17 of the 20 cities to have fallen.
Theres already a glut of homes left in each area by the real estate bust, and more foreclosures are expected as Americans fall behind on mortgage payments. Foreclosures add to the supply of homes on the market, bringing down prices.
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Let me just cut it off there. Theres plenty more, believe me.
The brilliant Obama plan to save peoples homes is a flat-out bust. As with Cash for Clunkers, the artificial stimulus of home purchases barely lasted out the duration of the program.
President Omoeba couldnt have failed more abysmally at stemming the tide of foreclosures if he had triedand Im still not sure he didnt. Hes either the worst president in the history of the Republica political love child of Jimmy Carter and Millard Fillmoreor hes the most diabolical, creating a Great Depression out of merely bad recession.