Moody’s calls a bottom in US housing

Posted by Stacy-Marie Ishmael on Feb 09 19:56.

Step forward, Mark Zandi of Moody’s, so that we at FT Alphaville may hail your bravery, your verve, your iconoclasm. Or at the very least, your willingness to make a bold call.

Mark Zandi believes US house prices will stabilize by the end of the year.
In a just-released survey titled “Housing in Crisis: When Will Metro Markets Recover?” (yours for just $3,995), Zandi and his team posit:

The national Case-Shiller house price index will decline by another 11% from the fourth quarter of last year for a total peak-to-trough decline of 36%.

By the end of this unprecedented downturn, house prices will have declined by double digits peak to trough in nearly 62% of the nation’s 381 metro areas. In about 10% of metro areas, price declines will exceed 30%.

So where then the green shoots of recovery? The executive summary is tantalisingly vague on details, but HousingWire reports that the Moody’s crackshots “see flattening inventories, prices coming back down to earth, and sales that are approaching stability in many markets.”

And who are we to argue with Moody’s? Oh, wait…