NEW YORK — Recent housing and employment data suggests the U.S. economy is at a tipping point where a double-dip recession is possible and home prices could have much further to fall.
Robert Shiller said the recent uptick in unemployment is not yet enough of a sign as to which way the recovery is heading. But if unemployment continues to rise in the coming months, it could suggest another recession.
“Whether we call it a double-dip or not, I think there is a risk,” Shiller told Reuters Insider in an interview.
Likewise, data showing U.S. home prices fell into a double dip in March could prove to be either a seasonal effect over the winter months or part of a downward trend.
“My gut feeling is we might see a continuation of the decline” in home prices, Shiller said earlier Thursday at a Standard & Poor’s housing summit.
He added that a 10% to 25% slump in real home prices “wouldn’t surprise me at all,” though he cautioned that was not a forecast.
Shiller pointed to the glut of unsold homes on the market and the large amount of homeowners under water on their mortgages as pressuring prices.
As for when home prices might bottom, Shiller told Insider that was unclear and it was possible prices could slide for 20 years.
“We’ve seen five years of decline already since the peak in 2006 and I don’t see evidence that we’re coming out of it,” he said.
Shiller, known for warning about bubbles in the stock market and housing market, is also the co-founder of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. Last week the index showed single-family home prices in March slumped to lows not seen since March 2003, falling below the previous crisis-era bottom set in April 2009.
That report, along with other data, including grim jobs figures and a slowdown in manufacturing, suggested that the economic soft patch seen in the first quarter of the year could be more protracted.
Home prices had been supported last spring by a tax credit, but the housing market has struggled since the credit expired.
Sources told Reuters earlier this week that the Obama administration has grown increasingly frustrated with the country’s struggling housing sector and is exploring ways to keep it from weakening further.
Thomson Reuters 2011
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