Home Prices Fall to 2003 Levels; When Will Housing Hit Bottom?

The Fed's are helping out the banks by giving them the original value back on the notes. So in effect they lose nothing. In fact they actually make money!!!!! The Feds step in and buy up $900 billion worth of note that the banks were holding. Thanks Bernarke!!! It is the very reason why they refuse to refi. They would lose money that way. The guy who purchased the property get it in the rear. His credit goes in to the toilet, most likely has to file a BK. and will be out of the market for years. The fat bankers hold on to their new money and then put the screws to the American people. They are the same banks who lent money to the Europen countries and are now back at the table asking the Feds to bail them out of this mess too!!!

Wait...I'm confused. I thought they said the housing market would hit bottom in late 2009. And then in the summer of 2010, and then it would recover in 2011. This hasn't happened? Are you telling me that the govt and their media lap dogs have been feeding us b*******t?

But I have a question? Why do housing values have to increase? My car doesn't increase in value as I use it and it starts to need work. Neither does any other hard asset. Maybe we need to rethink that a house is a place to live and not an investment that gives you a return. There are more houses available than people that want them. So I'll take a stab at the question....decades.

Banks should be stopped from fooling people into believing their house is a bank. They're homes, not savings accounts.

House prices will hit bottom when the number of available houses matches the number of people who can afford to live in them.

Housing will bottom when employment goes up ....

it won't until people can afford, job at livable levels

If the government did not intervene, it would have bottomed a long time ago. Gimmicks, low interest rates, 3% down, kicking the can down the road, only makes the decline so much more painful and also sucks in many buyers who are buying depreciating properties. If government did not intervene, prices would have bottomed to 1995 levels and start going back up again now.

No job, no new house and even when jobs do pick-up it will be a while before it translates into rising home prices. People can't relocate to a new job even if it is a $10-20k bump in salary when they will lose $40-50k selling their current home.

Housing will be dead for another 10-15 years. There is a huge inventory, huge number of foreclosed homes, huge number of under water loans, 10% - 17% unemployment, prices are 200% higher than the real values, banks do not give loans, and the US population is not growing fast enough. Get it? There is not going to be a miracle.

Income is not at 2003 levels, so people cannot afford what they could in 2003. Housing will continue to fall in most areas for years to come, as the supply and shadow supply are both huge, and income is going down, or being claimed by other items such as food, gasoline and gadgets that did not exist in 2003.

I'm getting sick of people complaining about having to put 20% down on a home. It's called "having skin in the game", my friend. Part of the reason we are in this mess is due to the 100% financing, 5/1 ARM, interest-only NINJA loans that were a result of regulation put in place by the government who wanted EVERYONE to be a "homeowner". People don't have a problem walking away from their mortgages when the house is 98% owned by the bank anyway. It should be a LAW that requires at LEAST 20% be put down in order to close a mortgage.

If you don't have enough cash saved to put a 20% downpayment, I got news for you. You are purchasing above your means, and are a big part of the reason we are in this mess in the first place.

Bernanke is now printing trillions to bail out europe so when the dollar becomes worthless houses will still have some value, problem solved.

3,000 home are auctioned in bank lobbies everyday for pennies on the dollar so it's not hard to see just how much worse the market will become! People are in absolute DENIAL about the value they have in real estate!

Our government wants to micro-manage everything. If they just let things take a natural course, it'll work itself out. It's when the Feds step in to save their cronies from their own greed, that the American people suffer. If it were left to supply and demand, it would stabilize on it's own. But, not with the Fed buying up every toxic loan that their buddies have. Sometimes, it's just best to let things evolve naturally. Yea, some people are going to take a hit, but others will prosper. That's just the way of things. You can only sandbag for so long and then the hurricane is going to do what it naturally does, regardless.

2012 will see many more people falling behind in their mortgages. Despite all the jingle bell forecasts for holiday sales, the hard facts are that the economy is still in shambles. We still have 2 undeclared wars to pay for remember. Stay tuned for the next round of foreclosures coming to a neighbourhood near you.

I started buying investment houses about 30 years, but no longer buy investment properties. Back then, they were $50,000 plus (for a tiny house) and went up to over 100k in about 10 years. My son is right now buying a house for under $40,000. That is less than I payed 30 years ago for a house in my area. I don't see any bottom in sight.

In my hometown of Claremont, NH, our homes are over assessed at 2006 levels, high property tax rates, and the citizens are unable to sell their homes because of the market. These elected officials need to wake up and see how bad it is out there.

Hang on folks, 2012 is about to happen. In cash, waiting for mass deflation. This is really, really going to hurt.

The Fed needs to stay out of the housing market, government stupidity is what got the housing market in the mess it is in. Thanks to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, someone earning $14,000 could get into a $750,000 home with nothing down and nothing to pay for 2 years, this crap was bundled with 100 others into bonds, and rated AAA then sold to banks & pension funds. Ergo! one hell of a market crash. Let the housing market take due course and it will eventually be back to normal.

We need capitulation.