Real estate experts aren't too optimistic about the housing market's short-term strength.
The
Zillow quarterly Home Price Expectations Survey shows that 40 percent of the 107 panelists don't expect the housing market to normalize for another three to five years.
A total of 30 percent believe it will take one to two years, while 20 percent think it's already happened or will within 12 months.
The panelists include economists and investment strategists.
On average, the panelists expect U.S. median home values to rise 4.8 percent this year to $176,760, and then 3.7 percent in 2015. They don't anticipate median home-prices will top their 2007 peak of $196,400 until February 2018.
"The expert consensus calls for only a marginal increase in home values nationally for the remainder of 2014, and a leveling-off of annual increases through 2019," Terry Loebs, founder of Pulsenomics, which conducted the study, said in a statement.
The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 5.6 percent in the 12 months through August, the smallest gain since November 2012.
"We're going to see a slower pace of increase, prices still going up, but at a slower pace, and that will help pull some of that sideline demand in," Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Sterne Agee & Leach, told
Bloomberg.
"I do expect prices to continue to slow in order to allow for new demand to come into the marketplace."
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