By Lewis Braham | Bloomberg Businessweek
Talk to Mark Hanson about the housing market for five minutes and you may find yourself wanting to sell your home and park the cash in a suitcase.
The Menlo Park, California, real estate analyst, blogger and founder of consultancy Hanson Advisers predicts a decline of 20 percent in housing prices in the next 12 months. Half the gains since the latest housing bottom in 2011 could be erased in the hot areas — Florida, California, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — by rising interest rates and a thinner herd of speculative private-equity buyers, he says.
Less bearish real estate experts such as Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow and a Hanson fan, also see signs of froth. Existing home sales jumped 6.5 percent to 5.39 million this July, their highest level in three years. In August those sales fell 1.6 percent despite a surge in 30-year mortgage rates — a move Humphries says was healthy because the market needed to cool off, and that relatively mild reaction showed there was still buying in the face of rising rates.
