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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

JPM Analyst: House Prices may fall 30%

by Calculated Risk on 6/11/2008 11:55:00 AM

Important note: Reuters has corrected the story. It now reads:

Home prices may fall 25 percent to 30 percent from their peak in 2006 and not hit bottom until 2010 ...
This is much more in line with my thinking. Note that nominal prices are off 16.1% according to Case-Shiller, so we are about half way to JPM's forecast.

Here was the orginal post:

From Reuters: US home prices may dip 30 pct, junk bonds weaken-JPM
[Peter Acciavatti, credit analyst and managing director at JP Morgan Securities Inc, said] Home prices may fall another 25 percent to 30 percent over the next four years, with greater drops still in subprime mortgage debt markets, he said.

In a separate interview, the analyst said junk bond spreads will push past 800 basis points and may top 900 basis points as the crisis drags out.
I think we will see price declines for several more years, but this seems a little too bearish to me. An additional 25% to 30% decline in nominal prices over four years would be close to an additional 40% decline in real prices - and that would put real prices at the lowest level since the Case-Shiller Index started in 1987. Note that real prices are already off 21% according to the Case-Shiller national index.

Wow. And I thought I was bearish on housing!

Note: My comments were based on the original article forecasting an additional 30% decline in prices.