Special report, Part I: Do you know where your Realtor is?

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Former Chicago Tribune staff writer Mary Umberger is in Orlando, Fla., for the annual Realtors confab and is serving as our ears and eyes on the ground. Here is the first of four reports she is filing for L.A. Land:

It would be a stretch to characterize the mood at the annual convention here of the National Assn. of Realtors as ‘gloomy’ , but ‘sober’ might come close. Exhibit A would be the cascade of negative data that its chief economist showered on attendees on Friday, the opening day. Somber data on unemployment, contracts to purchase homes and home sales fell like hailstones. The tone was unusually blunt for this gathering, which -- to understate -- is traditionally a bastion of optimism.

On the good news/bad news front, chief economist Lawrence Yun said he thinks sales, nationwide, may have largely finished their downward plunge. ‘From the home sales point of view, we may have hit bottom,’ he said. Not that they’re going to resume any particular velocity, although he thinks they may be stuck in neutral. ‘We are bouncing along the bottom’ and will continue to do so, he said.

But then there’s the matter of home prices, which unfortunately have not found a bottom yet, he said. He reported on Friday that, start to finish, 2008 home prices will have declined by 9.3%. That is, by far, the worst performance since NAR began keeping such data in 1968, Yun said.

As if that weren’t grim enough, Yun added his own interpretation: ‘It is, certainly, the largest price decline since the Great Depression.’

This is frank talk, coming from a trade group that just a few years ago responded to those who worried about the sustainability of the housing boom by practically chanting in unison that U.S. home prices had never declined on a nationwide basis.

Yun’s other prognostications: Job losses will continue for the next six months, and without a housing-specific stimulus package from Congress, prices will likely drone on for an additional 12 months, representing $150 billion in lost income and lost output, he said. ‘Whether housing recovers will determine whether the recession is short or long.’

Other data crunching: The NAR predicts that the nation’s gross domestic product will decline by .3% in 2009; inflation next year should grow by 2%; unemployment should hit 6.7%.

-- Lauren Beale

Thoughts? Comments?