Home Price Declines Now at Depression Era Levels

May 8 -- EIRNS -- U.S. home price declines this year are going to be steeper than earlier forecast, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors. As reported on the business website Bloomberg.com, the group today revised its forecast for home prices and sales, all of it downward. According to their revised report, the 2007 median price for an existing home likely will drop 1% to $219,800 from what it was a year before. The median price for new homes is also projected to fall, slightly, which would be the first decline since 1991. Sales of previously owned homes, 85 percent of the market, will "probably" total 6.29 million this year, they said, less than the 6.34 million they had previously reported. Their new projection is that new home sales will now fall to 864,000, below the previous month's forecast of 904,000.

According to an NAR spokesman, the U.S. median price for a previously owned home has not declined since the real estate trade group began keeping records in 1968, despite regional declines. The last time the national median declined probably was during the Great Depression of the 1930s.