From the Realtors: Sorry, Prices Do Fall

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The notoriously bullish National Association of Realtors on Wednesday finally admitted that housing prices are likely to fall this year across the nation. No biggie, in the sense that most analysts have already been predicting this. The problem for the realtors, and their economic credibility, is that they’ve been saying for months now that housing prices almost never ever fall. Never ever. Ever. Almost.

As recently as February, the Realtors had been predicting a 1.9% increase in prices this year; now they are predicting a 0.7% decline.

The decline would be the first since the 1930s, according to the Realtors. Hard as it is to spin that as good news, the Realtors’ chief economist, David Lereah, managed to try: “The good news is that inventories remain well below the levels experienced during the last housing downturn in the early 1990s, and supplies are close to balance in many areas,’ he said.

Source: CNN Money, via www.thehousingbubbleblog.com.