2011 Seen as Historic Turning Point for Housing – Robert Shiller

As I mentioned earlier, it seems like housing may be finally nearing the bottom.  I know many have predicted this for some time now and it has not come to fruition.  There are still many, many problems in housing so it’s not likely that prices will increase much in the coming years, however, it is looking more and more like the worst is over for the housing market.

Inman News has a story about 2011 being the turning point for housing.  More than half of the real estate market experts polled in June by MacroMarkets LLC now expect home prices nationally to have bottomed in 2011.  In fact they may well have bottomed in Q1 2011.

Robert Shiller is the chief economist and co-founder of MacroMarkets LLC.  He is also the co-founder and author of the Case-Shiller Index which is the most closely watched index on home prices.  Shiller goes on to say the following in a statement:

A significant majority of our panelists believe that the bottom for home prices arrived in the first quarter or will arrive sometime before year-end. Despite persistent macroeconomic uncertainty and unprecedented housing market dysfunction, almost two-thirds of the panelists see the U.S. residential real estate market as at an historic turning point.

The real time to measure if we’ve turned will be this winter when activity normally slows down.  Will prices be able to hold?  It’s going to depend a lot on the inventory, interest rates, the overall economy and job creation.

Perhaps the best overall analysis of the monthly Case-Shiller Index reports can be found at CalculatedRiskBlog.  I will continue to cover it here at John Murphy Reports.