Home prices have been on the rebound since early 2012, with the S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices for 20 major cities rising 12.9 percent in the year through February.
But plenty of Americans are missing out on the move, says Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College.
"Recently there’s been a lot of happy talk about the nation’s housing recovery,"
he writes in The New York Times.
Editor's Note: Free Video — ‘Rogue Calendar’ Could Turn 490% Profits
"Frequent reports about rising prices suggest that the tens of millions of people whose homes lost value just have to wait until the recovery reaches their neighborhood to lift them out of crisis. But this supposed housing recovery is bypassing many of our cities and towns."
The total value of the country's owner-occupied homes stands a whopping $3.2 trillion below the level of 2006. And 9.8 million households still have mortgages that are higher than the market value of their homes, according to Zillow.
"Without government intervention, many of them are at risk of joining the almost 5 million households that have already suffered through foreclosure since the housing bubble burst in 2007," Dreier writes.
Chad Morganlander, a portfolio manager for Stifel Nicolaus' Washington Crossing Advisors, says the housing market's recent sluggishness stems from high household debt levels and a weak employment picture.
He notes that in March, the seasonally-adjusted annual housing-starts rate totaled only 946,000.
"Back in the ‘90s, pre-bubble, that was running around 1.2 million,"
Morganlander told CNBC/Yahoo Finance.
Skepticism of the struggling housing market has been growing.
Heidi Moore, U.S. economics editor at The Guardian, didn't believe in the housing rebound story last June, and she still doesn't.
"People wanted to believe in a housing recovery," she tells
Yahoo. "They saw rising prices as a sign that good times are here. But it's not that."
While some analysts are blaming the brutal winter weather for the housing market's weakness during the past few months, Moore doesn't buy it.
"Weather has been blamed for a lot, and it's true it has some role. But there are so many other metrics that go in the direction of real trouble," she notes.
"People haven't been able to borrow for a mortgage for years. That has nothing to do with the weather."
While some believe the housing market is holding back the economic recovery, Moore thinks the opposite is true.
"It's the other way around. It's the economy that affects the housing market. . . . Low growth, low wages, stagnating employment and long-term unemployment are all reasons why people aren't buying houses, and those are economic issues."
Just how the housing gains have tailed off in recent months has surprised legendary investor Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.
"The pickup in housing has been slower than I would have anticipated," he tells
CNBC. "If you look at transactions and pending transactions in March, it's not booming."
Editor's Note: Free Video — ‘Rogue Calendar’ Could Turn 490% Profits
Related Stories:
© 2025 Newsmax Finance. All rights reserved.