The U.S. housing market won’t recover for three to five years as mounting foreclosures hold down prices, according to mortgage-bond pioneer Lewis Ranieri.
“There’s another big leg down and the question is how long does it stay,” Ranieri, chairman of Ranieri Partners LLC, said during a panel discussion today at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. “You can’t have much of a rally when you’ve got this big overhang.”
Home foreclosures probably will reach a record this year with more than 1 million properties seized by banks, according to data seller RealtyTrac Inc. Unemployment was 9.7 percent in March, unchanged for a third month, according to the Labor Department, and a fifth of mortgaged U.S. homes were worth less than their loans in the fourth quarter, Zillow.com reported.
Full story: Housing Rebound at Least 3 Years Away, Ranieri Says (Update1) – Bloomberg.com