Have We Reached Bottom?

There was a good Wall Street Journal opinion article titled "The Housing Crisis Is Over"which makes some interesting conclusions based on historical and current market data that April 2008 marked the bottom of the U.S. housing market. And at a Legislative Meeting last Thursday, NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun announced home sales should begin to grow later this year, but real improvement in the housing market won't happen until 2009, when sales should climb to 5.71 million units. Prices also are expected to begin a turnaround later this year, but of course will vary by market. A brighter credit picture is a major contributor to this improvement, if you look at where home prices fell the most, it's the markets were subprime loans were prevalent, Detroit; Las Vegas; Miami; Orlando, and Phoenix were among the cities where the markets suffered the most. These markets should get a boost from a more stable mortgage market. FHA lending doubled to 6 percent of all loans 2007 and should grow to 10 percent in 2008. It should reach near-historic norms of 15 percent in 2009. This Week's Real Estate Insight: The problem with looking for the Bottom is you don't realize you have reached the bottom until prices start to climb again, and the beauty of being at the bottom is there is nowhere to go but up!