Havard economic professor Edward Glaser’s views on the real estate market:
There is no reason to expect a big post-slump jump, and every reason to expect that prices and construction levels will continue to muddle along for quite some time. Don’t expect prices to return to their boom levels for years, if not decades.
Between September and October, both of the Case-Shiller seasonally adjusted indexes rose, in nominal terms, by about a third of a percentage point. Prices increased in 11 metropolitan areas and declined in nine. Without seasonal adjustment, the numbers look slightly worse, with the 20-city index showing a tiny decline and the 10-city index showing a tiny increase. The best way to interpret these numbers is that prices were flat.
Dismayed analysts seem to have been hoping and expecting that prices would come roaring back after they hit bottom last spring, but that optimism seems at odds with both past housing history and with good housing economics. We should expect prices to stay flat for quite some time, and that isn’t a bad thing.
