Prices to fall more?
Here’s a chart that suggests there’s actually more room for home prices to fall, using historic price/income ratios as a guide.
But here’s the problem with such guides: Sometimes historical trends change — and economic trends change with them.
Here in the Boston area, the price/income ratio has been historically higher than the rest of the nation. Maybe the rest of the nation is just catching up — or at least closing the income/ratio gap. Who’s to say?
There are literally millions of people who bought homes at inflated prices during the boom years, and most of them are going to hang tough to avoid losses. The market will adjust accordingly. The boom years may have permanently ratched up prices to a degree, as well as price/income ratios.
All bets are off if the current “recovery” turns out to be an illusion and things get worse again.
But the hunch here is that the bottom, at least during this phase of the economic-crisis soap opera, has been reached.