Home Price & Foreclosure Outlook Remains Bleak...

Home prices continue to fall because sales aren't taking off. Without buyers, the market can't bottom out. 

New home sales continue to languish around historic lows, barely exceeding an annual rate of 307,000. Existing home sales did rise to a 4.53 million annualized rate in September, up +10% compared with a month earlier, but are still well below the boom years.

Of course, nobody is buying homes when they can't find jobs. And still more people can't hang on to their homes because they're out of work. 

Nearly 1 million homes are expected to be repossessed this year, and analysts seem to be competing to issue the most dire forecast for future foreclosure numbers.

- Morgan Stanley reported that about 3.1 million borrowers are seriously delinquent with many expected to lose their homes.

- Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's Analytics, says more than 4 million homes are in trouble with half of those expected to go to foreclosure.

- And Laurie Goodman, of Amherst Securities, estimates the number of homes in danger of foreclosure at a whopping 11 million!

- Real estate analyst Kyle Lundstedt, of LPS Applied Analytics, said serious delinquencies will continue to spike and will not return even to the current rates -- which are already at peak levels -- until late 2012 or early 2013.