Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.com, has published his latest analysis of the U.S. housing market, and it tells the same story that every reasonable person could anticipate:  The government’s efforts to “prop up” the U.S. real estate market has fallen flat and many real estate markets across the United States appear poised for a double-dip in home values.

Nationally, Humphries says that U.S. real estate declined by another 5% in 2009, with some markets – like Las Vegas, Nevada – doing much, much worse.

And in a sign of the times – the Mortgage Banker’s Association lost it’s Washington headquarters to a short sale at discount of $37.7 million to their purchase price of $79 million (according to TheStreet.com).  Doesn’t it strike you as quite odd that the organization whose purpose is to “represent the real estate finance industry” couldn’t see the writing on the wall for itself?

I don’t know if this is funny or really scary.  In some sick sort of way, I believe it’s the former.  Another case of “pride coming before the fall”?

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