"New York City showed an 88 percent chance of lower prices, according to PMI."

This report is bogus. There is a zero chance that this is the bottom.

Wow. Sobering article. You have to figure that if PMI - those insuring mortgages with tons of empirical evidence - is predicting this, it's scary. At best, we can maybe hope for a quicker recovery, or less % chance of further declines. Either way, we're not even close to bottoming. Hold on to your property as long as you can - it will probably take 10+ years to get back to 2006 levels. OY!!

> it will probably take 10+ years to get back to 2006 levels.

And, in real terms... I wonder if it ever will.

Good point. I was thinking nominally.

Who is johngalt?

Ya know, not to get off topic, but does anyone else who knows who John Galt is find a striking similarity between what happens in the book and what is happening now?

Sometimes I think, perhaps, the names, people, and stories could just be swapped and no one would know the difference...

...sobering, indeed. And the one point people are forgetting is demographics. Remember, this boom that started in the early 1970's was fueled by baby-boomers starting families and needing housing. We are now at the dawn of a new decade where the demographics will switch - from 2010 to 2019 there will be a three-fold increase of Americans 65 and older as compared to Americans 25 to 64. And older folks tend to sell, not buy....so we're in for a massive market shift as supply and demand falls out of balance. Hold on to your hat folks...rough road ahead...

I find PMI's report useless considering they don't say HOW MUCH prices will decline. There is an 88% chance of prices in NYC falling by how much? 5%? 25%? 50%?

Its not useless if it convinced somebody not to buy. Doesn't matter how much its going down, its a bad move if you don't need to buy now.

That information would have been helpful to you before you made your mistake. Whether it was 5% or 50%, it would have been the right move to make.

I did not make a mistake. The renters who invested their money in the stock market before it fell 40% did. My house has not lost 40% of its value or even half that much.

Uncle Alp...do you know what that means???
12% chance your right!
Congrats on the up-tick.

Mr President ... renters invest over time whereas you are not just fully invested .. you are a leveraged player!!!

Man, talk about picking and choosing what reports you want to believe. So now all of the sudden everyone thinks PMI Company is a reliable source for predicting the market?

Where were these great projections, when they kept insuring up to 95% loan to value, during the boom years?? All of these PMI companies lost their shirts, some even left the business altogether.

I would take any analysis done by a company who is tettering on bankruptcy because of prior inaccurate projections with a healthy dose of skepticism.