Economists redrew their expectations for home prices for 2012, slashing forecasts from 0.2 percent to 0.7 percent.
[IMAGE]Real estate Web site ""Zillow"":http://www.zillow.com/ partnered with ""Pulsenomics LLC"":https://pulsenomics.com/ to project prices in a Home Price Expectations Survey it released earlier Wednesday.
More than 100 economists and real estate experts came to the consensus
[COLUMN_BREAK]in their survey responses, with the more optimistic saying that prices could lift 1.4 percent next year, down from 1.8 percent.
Drawing on a ""Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Index"":http://www.standardandpoors.com/indices/sp-case-shiller-home-price-indices/en/us/?indexId=spusa-cashpidff--p-us, Zillow projected that home prices would climb from 1.39 percent next year by 2.55 percent in 2014, 3.18 percent in 2015, and 3.32 percent in 2016.
""The fourth quarter drop in the national Case-Shiller Index was sharper than some expected and is the likely reason so many of the economists in the survey revised their forecasts downward,"" Zillow Chief Economist ""Stan Humphries"":http://www.zillow.com/profile/Stan-Humphries/ said in a statement.
""Looking at the longer history of these forecasts by top economists, the bottom in home prices always seems just around the corner but never quite here,"" he added. ""Conditions across the country vary considerably.""
Of the many economists reached by the survey, Zillow said, Susan Sterne, with Economic Analysis Associates Inc., said home prices will ascend by 5 percent during 2012.
The statement added that Gary Shilling, with A. Gary Shilling & Company, differed by projecting a decline in prices by 8 percent.