U.S. Housing Recovery Delayed to 2010 as Market Wanes

A recovery in U.S. housing will have to wait at least until next year.

The outlook for the home market dimmed this week as residential construction and mortgage applications fell and loan delinquencies reached a record.

“I don’t think the housing crisis is over,” Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Economy.com, said in a telephone interview. “I think we’re going to see another leg down.”

New home sales may begin to pick up by the start of the so-called spring selling season, said Toll Brothers Inc., the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder. Existing house sales may take longer. Residential construction and property sales led the way out of the previous seven recessions going back to 1960, said David Berson, chief economist of PMI Group, the mortgage insurer in Walnut Creek, California. (more)