With bank-owned properties driving down housing prices and unemployment remaining high, Clear Capital analysts predict that home sale prices in the U.S. may fall another 2.4 percent in the coming six months. They credit the “limp” sales to low consumer confidence and a high volume of distressed properties.

However, there are five metro areas for which Clear Capital has slightly brighter hopes: Washington D.C., New York, Orlando, Dallas and San Fransisco. For areas like Virginia Beach, VA, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Chicago and Fresno, CA, however, Clear Capital projects weak markets for the next six months. Clear capital analysts believe that a “true and sustainable bottom” in the housing market has not yet been reached, but hope and believe that “home prices may reach bottom in the first quarter of 2012 assuming that Fed predictions about jobless rates falling in early 2012 to around 8 percent hold true.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Alex Villacorta, Clear Capital director of research and analytics, believes that the slight “seasonal blip” that historically happens when home buyers come out in the warmer months to buy could be a good sign that the depressed housing market is, finally, nearing the end of the decline[2]. “We haven’t seen any seasonal clip in some time…it is a sign that markets are returning to normalcy once again,” says Villacorta.

Do you think that we’re finally near the bottom? Have we reached it already?

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[1]http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/real-estate-forecast-home-prices-limp-into-2012-07082011.html
[2]http://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-cities-where-home-prices-will-rise-this-year-yet-2011-07-08