DALLAS (Dallas Morning News) – Still-rising mortgage delinquencies and a stock of bank-owned homes have not finished leaving their impact on the housing industry, warn economists at this week’s National Association of Home Builders’ annual conference in Las Vegas.
Many lenders, wary of hurting residential values, are cautious about putting repossessed homes back on the market, said David Berson, chief economist for mortgage insurance firm PMI Group.
“That does mean it will be longer before we start to get a real recovery in home prices,” he said. “We are still years away from that — perhaps three years.”
While the market struggles for recovery, analysts warn that foreclosures will continue.
Frank Nothaft, chief economist for mortgage firm Freddie Mac, sees them peaking in the second half of 2010.
In the Dallas–Fort Worth area, about 5.7 percent of home loans were 90 days or more behind in payments at the end of November, less than the nationwide rate of over 8 percent, according to First American CoreLogic.
North Texas home foreclosure filings rose more than 20 percent in 2009 and are expected to continue rising in 2010 unless economic conditions improve.
Texas is one of 11 states that account for 70 percent of home foreclosures, according to the National Association of Home Builders.