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Realtors Group Says Housing Market Stabilizing, Upgrades Outlook

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By ALAN ZIBEL, The Associated Press

Published: December 11, 2007

WASHINGTON - Bucking conventional wisdom, a trade group for real estate agents on Monday said the battered housing market is on the verge of stabilizing and inched up its outlook for 2007 and 2008 home sales.

The revised monthly forecast from the National Association of Realtors, which came after nine months of downward revisions, calls for U.S. existing home sales to fall 12.5 percent this year to 5.67 million - the lowest level since 2002. Last month, the association predicted 5.66 million existing homes would be sold this year, down from 6.48 million last year.

The Realtors' group also forecast sales will rise slightly in 2008 to 5.7 million, up from last month's prediction of 5.69 million.

Numerous other economists, however, are far less optimistic than the trade group. They predict weak sales and falling prices through next year and beyond and emphasize that those problems could worsen if the economy sinks into a recession.

Patrick Newport, an economist at Global Insight, forecasts that home sales will drop from 5.66 million this year to 4.7 million in 2008 - 1 million fewer home sales than the real estate group's forecast.

"With the economy and job growth slowing ... it is hard to believe that we have hit bottom," Newport said in a note to clients Monday.

Joel Naroff, chief economist for Commerce Bank, said the United States is 12 to 18 months away from a "normal housing market" in which sales are growing and prices are rising or stable. Furthermore, he said the trade group's 0.2 percent revision to its sales forecast should be taken with a grain of salt, given the difficulty of projecting with any certainty.

Nevertheless, the Realtors group's chief economist, Lawrence Yun, gave a positive outlook for job growth and the replacement of subprime lenders to borrowers with weak credit with government-backed loans as reasons for the improved outlook.

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