Home prices in for another tumble in 2010?
Posted by Scott Van Voorhis December 18, 2009 – Moody’s Economy.com’s Mark Zandi, who has gone positively gloomy on the prospects for the housing market in 2010.
In fact, Moody’s star economist is predicting another big fall in home prices next year, by 5 to 10 percent. Harder hit markets, like Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix could see huge drops of as much as 20 to 30 percent.
Of course, it does not take a rocket scientist to list all the factors, as Zandi does, that will be a drag on home prices.
It’s the usual list of suspects: high unemployment, a planned pullback by the Fed come March on its aggressive buying of mortgage-backed securities, not to mention the phasing out of the home buyer tax credit a month later in April.
And of course there’s the never ending foreclosure crisis to round out the list, with another 2.4 million homes likely to be seized by their lenders.