If you had any doubts it is going to take a very long time to dig out of the housing mess we're in, check out this report: PMI Mortgage Insurance is predicting an "elevated" or "high" probability that prices will be lower in nearly half the nation's 50 largest housing markets by the fall of 2010.
Boston just missed being cast into the elevated category.
PMI lists a 42.8 percent chance that home prices will be lower in late 2010, up from just 16.9 percent last year.
It's a reading that makes sense if you look not just at the pricey downtown condo market, which has so far weathered the storm, but at prices in the suburbs as well, which have been battered by foreclosures.
SCOTT VAN VOORHIS
Nationally, home prices are already down 23 percent from their July 2006 peak.
By contrast, the "Cambridge-Newton-Framingham" area has the good fortune of being listed as "low" risk, with just a 17.8 percent chance of winding up with lower prices late in 2010.
The difference may be explained partly by the report's methodology, which looked at unemployment and foreclosure rates in determining the risk of falling house prices.
The last time I checked, Newton wasn't exactly foreclosure central.
However, for a real bargain, I'd suggest booking a trip to Las Vegas or Miami for September of 2010.
There's a better than 99 percent chance that home prices in both markets will be lower then, PMI suggests.
SCOTT VAN VOORHIS
