ChitownLiving | Chicago Real Estate + Life

Excerpt from CNNMoney.com…

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Over the next few years, more than three-quarters of the nation’s housing markets will suffer some decline in home prices. Many will experience double-digit hits in a forecast that has worsened considerably in recent months. According to an analysis conducted by Moody’s Economy.com, declines will exceed 10 percent in 86 of the 379 largest housing markets. And 290 of the cities will experience price drops of 1 percent or more. The survey attempted to identify the high and low points of housing prices in each of the markets, some of which started declining from their peak in the third quarter of 2005. All are median prices for single-family houses. Nationally, Moody’s is projecting an average price decline of 7.7 percent. That’s a jump from the 6.6 percent total price drop that the company was forecasting in June and more than twice that of last October’s forecast of a 3.6 percent price decrease. Many of the worst hit cities are in Sun Belt areas that experienced outsized home-price growth during the real estate bubble, according to Arnold Slesers, an associate economist at Moody’s. The home price correction in many of these cities will be severe as unsold new homes and leaps in foreclosures add to already big inventories.

The article is complete with a top 100 list of metro areas expected to see a decline in median home prices.  Noticeably absent from the top 100 list is Chicago.