Where are home prices headed this year?
If the housing market is anything like 2011's, they'll be up one month and down the next, taking homeowners on a roller coaster of uncertainty.This presents a problem for prospective home buyers. With prices sliding, sellers have been few because owners want to see some price stability before putting their property on the market. And housing economists are all over the map on this one, providing little, if not confusing, help on what to do.Metroplex home prices are down about 10 percent from their peak in mid-2006, before the subprime mortgage meltdown prompted the Great Recession. Locally, median sales prices have been holding steady, but that's the result of more activity at the higher end of the market.Nationally in November, the median sales price rose 2.1 percent, to $164,200, according to the National Association of Realtors.Clear Capital lists the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area as the 15th-lowest-performing market in the U.S., with home prices slipping 0.4 percent in the third quarter from the second quarter, but showing a 1.6 percent gain on an annual basis.Zillow, an online provider of real estate data, said its December home price expectations survey of more than 100 economists, real estate experts and investment and market strategists, seemingly a knowing group of professionals, sees home prices increasing as much as 3 percent a year through 2016 -- or declining 1.5 percent by then."Given the current economic climate and uncertainty around the government's future role in housing, it's not surprising to see such a wide dispersion in long-term forecasts," Zillow chief economist Stan Humphries said in a statement.Carol Van Hook, broker/owner of Mira Vista Realtors in Fort Worth, doesn't foresee any big upsurge in prices in 2012.The year will definitely be a buyer's market, in part because there are a lot of properties to choose from."It's really an interesting market right now," Van Hook said. "You really have to be motivated" if you want to sell.She said she has seen a tightening of lending by the big banks but an uptick in lending from smaller community banks. And she has seen buyers plunk down hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to pay for homes at the time of the sale."People who have it are spending it," Van Hook said.Buyers believe that the market is in their favor right now, given lower home prices and record low mortgage rates, said Jim Gaines, a housing economist with Texas A&M University's Real Estate Center.He said he's heard about buyers walking away from deals because sellers just aren't negotiating on prices. There's always another property up for sale, he said."If you don't have to sell, don't, because you still may not get the price you want," Gaines said.In a recent study of consumer attitudes toward home buying, the Mortgage Bankers Association found that potential sellers don't see this as a good time to sell because they can't find buyers at the prices they want.According to the study, despite the nation's economic troubles, nearly 80 percent of American households believe that now is a good time to buy a house. But the sell side of the market is dominated by "deeply negative sentiment," the report said."As market values have fallen, potential sellers have not adjusted their price expectations downward fast enough to bring buyer and seller sentiment in line with one another," Gary Engelhardt, a Syracuse University professor who worked on the study, said in a statement."I expect that over the near term, positive home-buying sentiment will remain at levels typical of the last 30 years. In contrast, positive home-selling sentiment is expected to remain at historically low levels. This suggests that market activity will likely remain sluggish in the near term."In Texas, real estate prices remained flat in the third quarter, the latest figures available. The median price, $151,800, was unchanged from the same period a year ago, according to the Texas Association of Realtors. The median price is where half the homes sold cost more and half cost less.Home prices in Texas could rise from 2 to 4 percent on average statewide, but some areas could go higher than that and other areas may see price declines, Gaines said."I don't expect it to go up a whole lot," Gaines said."It's going to be highly variable, but no one will drop off the table."The latest Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller monthly report on home prices in the nation's top 20 metro areas showed that home prices nationwide have declined 32 percent since their peak in June/July 2006. "Over the last year home prices in most cities drifted lower," S&P economist David Blitzer said in a statement. "The plunging collapse of prices seen in 2007 to 2009 seems to be behind us." But he added, "Any chance for a sustained recovery will probably need a stronger economy."In a study of housing prices by Clear Capital, a real estate data provider, November figures show prices dropping 2.2 percent in a year-over-year comparison, marking 14 consecutive months of yearly declines.Alex Villacorta, Clear Capital's director of research and analytics, said in a report that he hopes housing markets "are settling after a very turbulent two years. Strong evidence suggests the big swings that many market participants are accustomed to could become a thing of the past."According to the Texas Association of Realtors, the median price in Arlington in the third quarter fell 1.8 percent to $129,600. In Fort Worth, the median price stayed flat at $115,000 from a year ago. The decline was much sharper in Northeast Tarrant County, down nearly 6 percent for the quarter from a year ago.Fiserv Case-Shiller recently forecast a 2.7 percent rise in Fort Worth-area home prices into the second quarter of 2012 over the second quarter of 2011. Fiserv released an analysis of 380 U.S. markets based on data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Home prices in the U.S. are expected to decline 3.6 percent by mid-2012, but then rebound 2.4 percent into the first half of 2013, Fiserv said.Sandra Baker, 817-390-7727Twitter: @SandraBakerFWSTHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
