Housing Market Poised
For Steep Downturn

The U.S. housing industry is in for a much deeper downturn, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday as it slashed its forecasts for home sales and construction for this year and next.

Tighter credit conditions will likely postpone the recovery even further, said Lawrence Yun, senior economist for the real estate trade group.

In their monthly forecast, the realtors cut their estimates for all housing-related indicators for this year and next year compared with last month's forecast. The group expects housing starts and sales of new homes to continue falling through 2008, but forecasts a mild recovery in sales of existing homes next year. Read their report.

Housing starts are now expected to fall 24% this year and an additional 8% next year to 1.26 million, about 10% less than the realtors' forecast from just a month ago. That would be the lowest since 1992.

Starts of single-family homes are projected to fall 26.5% this year and an additional 11% next year to 954,000, about 11% less than last month's forecast. It would be the lowest total since 1991.

New home sales are projected to fall 24% this year and an additional 7.4% next year to 741,000, about 13% less than the forecast a month ago. That would the lowest since 1995.

Existing-home sales are projected to fall 8.6% this year and rise 5.8% next year to 6.28 million, about 2% less than last month's forecast.

The median price for existing-homes is expected to fall 1.7% this year to $218,200 and rise 2.2% next year to $223,000.

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