Inquirer's Housing Prediction for 2009

In an article in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, reporter Harold Brubaker makes some predictions about housing in 2009:

Next year finally will bring the end of a three-year slump in housing prices in the Philadelphia region and across the country, economists say.
The decline from the peak in the second quarter of 2007 to the trough at the end of next year is projected to be 15 percent in Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs, according to Celia Chen, an economist at Moody's Economy. com in West Chester.
Citing the Fiserv Case-Schiller Home Price Index, Chen said conditions in South Jersey were worse, with average prices - in line with the national trend - likely to bottom out late next year at 30 percent below their peak in 2006.
The persistent slide has Toll Bros. Inc., of Horsham, biding time, luxuriating in a cash stockpile and cutting its developments to 255 from its peak of 325 in early 2007.
Residential real estate has been at the center of the nation's economic maelstrom, but its commercial cousin could start wreaking more havoc for banks as the recession victimizes more tenants of office buildings and shopping centers.

A lot of what Harold is predicting is what I have been saying for awhile now. I believe the drops in mortgage rates are creating the beginning of the bottom of the market. I think we will look back in 4 months and and see that we are past the bottom. In today's market, many homes that have been on the market for awhile are selling at lower prices, which is the first sign of recovery. Once all of the old inventory gets wiped out, new product will come on the market and prices will eventually beging to rise again.