Wednesday, May 5, 2010

TD Bank Predicting House Prices to Drop

From TD Economics.

Our existing home sales and average price forecast for 2010 is largely unchanged since December 2009. We still expect 475K transactions to take place, with an average annual price
nearing $350K, an increase of 9% over 2009.

However, this hides an underlying shift occurring over the course of this year. While we anticipated sales and prices to be strong in the first half and to cool in the second half, we now expect this contrast between the two halves will be sharper.

A surprisingly robust economic recovery provides some offset in the form of higher employment and income, but a combination of factors suggests a weaker handoff to 2011 than previously expected.

One crucial factor is the supply side response (listings) to higher home prices. While it was slow to appear, it is now stronger than had been expected. Housing starts have also been slightly higher than anticipated at 200K units in Q1/2010.

While we previously expected the average home price to gain a modest 1.6% in 2011 (stagnating in real, or inflation-adjusted terms), we now expect a modest pullback of 2.7% at the national level, with 7 out of 10 provinces experiencing lower prices.

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