Commercial & Residential Property Blog

Economists said May’s decline in home sales may weaken an already tepid economic recovery.

Home sales will increase 15 percent to about 5.7 million units and REALTOR® income will be up 20 percent in 2010, NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun told a packed room of REALTORS® today in a residential economic update at the 2009 NAR Conference & Expo.

Despite the recent market decline, Americans are still willing to borrow a large amount of money to buy a home because they are convinced that housing values will rise, writes Robert J. Shiller in his monthly New York Times column.

Shiller, professor of economics and finance at Yale University and cofounder and chief economist of MacroMarkets, examined survey data that asked home buyers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Boston a variety of questions, including how much they believe the value of their homes will change in the next year.

The fundamentals that drove the increase in housing values for the last century – increasing population, incomes, and household wealth – may not follow in the United States in the future. Some housing experts speculate this will change the economics of homeownership.