Bottom in home prices?

All articles about house prices and volume of sales have to be taken with a large grain of salt since they are all based on averages. Georgetown isn't your average U.S. town or neighborhood. So trying to draw conclusions from articles based on national averages is dicey at best. But...it IS a good sign that someone, somewhere sees prices bottoming out. And the article below quotes PMI, a powerful company which is on the front lines of the real estate business. While this article doesn't address Georgetown real estate directly, it certainly can be used as an indicator...and in this case a positive one.

A new study from PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. suggests home prices have found their bottom. The company's analysis shows that by almost all measures, residential property values began stabilizing considerably during the second and third quarters of last year - and monthly data through November confirms that this stabilization continued into the fourth quarter. PMI says the likelihood that home prices will drop lower over the next 24 months is diminishing for most large metro markets.

Of the 50 most-populated MSAs in the United States, 22 had declines in their risk index, while only 17 had increases in the third quarter. Among all 384 MSAs, risk scores in 212, or 55.2 percent decreased, compared with 136, or 35.4 percent, that had rising risk scores. Florida, California, Nevada, and Arizona MSAs continued to face the highest probability of continuing price drops. PMI said all metro areas studied in Florida, Nevada, and Arizona have risk scores that remain significantly elevated.

Source: DSNews.com, Carrie Bay, (02/05/2010) (From RealTrends newsletter)