A real estate data firm that says home prices fell about 8 percent in the Baltimore metro area last year expects declines of nearly 6 percent this year.
Clear Capital released a forecast today for the 50 largest metro areas, ranking our region 32nd. Washington, D.C. topped the list with an expected gain of more than 6 percent, while the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area of Virginia -- with a forecasted drop of nearly 13 percent -- is at the bottom.
Quite a range in a fairly small geographic region.
Here's how Clear Capital believes all the largest metro areas will do this year, compared with how they fared last year:
(Sorry to make you squint -- it's a screen capture from a PDF.)
Clear Capital, in case you've forgotten from earlier recitations, calculates price by comparing repeat sales of the same homes over the years.
A recent Wonk poll asked for your predictions on when the local housing market would recover. By "recover," I meant start to improve, not return to housing-bubble levels. You're a pessimistic bunch, unless you're defining recovery differently, because the most popular answer was "after 2015." (That option got 22 percent of the vote.)
All told, 60 percent chose 2013 or later, about the same as Americans participating in a survey conducted for Trulia.com and RealtyTrac.
As for the rest of the Wonk poll participants, 20 percent expect recovery in 2012.
Thirteen percent are more hopeful than that, predicting recovery this year.
Five percent are feeling especially sunny about the market, saying it's already recovered.
And the small remainder wrote in an answer, such as, "THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS SET UP TO FAIL AND ANY RECOVERY WILL BE A FACADE."
What a cheerful beat this is.
So, folks -- thoughts about the Clear Capital predictions? Want to take a stab at the simplest sort of forecast, namely whether prices will rise, fall or stay about the same?