The annual real estate forecast season is on, and Sacramento-area home builders caught a fresh earful of unfriendly predictions Thursday.

The consensus of economists, consultants and home-building executives regarding 2009 is the same as they all predicted in November 2007: This numbing housing slump has a long way yet to run.

"You saw how October went," Tim Lewis, owner of Roseville-based Tim Lewis Communities told 250 industry people. "That was one of the toughest months this market has ever seen. Anyone that's still standing right now must be doing something right."

This year's North State Building Industry Association forecast seemed to find builders bleaker than ever about immediate prospects. Bank repos are killing sales, and the economy is worsening. Hopes are largely pinned now on a distant future when inevitable population growth again stirs demand for what they build.

Until then, Folsom building industry tracker Greg Paquin had these predictions:

• Builders will sell 5,300 homes this year in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties and perhaps 10 percent more next year. That's if the economy improves in the second half. At the peak in 2004, more than 18,000 new homes were sold.

• New home prices – averaging $374,000 across the region – are about as low as they can go. He said, "We feel we're getting real close to the bottom in the Sacramento market."

• When the market does return, it will favor builders in Placer County, El Dorado Hills and Folsom. High fees, he said, will discourage builders in Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova, while flood-control work will be a barrier to building in West Sacramento and Natomas.

Economist Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, said he sees not a typical V-shaped fast rebound this time, but a long bottom.

"The news is all fear, fear fear. I call it the Paulson Panic," he said, criticizing the U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, President Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for badly frightening consumers with talk of economic collapse.

Scared consumers, fueling 72 percent of the economy, may well make the bust worse.

"In the long run, we need to save more and spend less," he said, "but you don't want to do it all in one quarter."

There are more forecasts soon for those who earn their living building new homes. Next is by Sullivan Group Real Estate Advisors on Tuesday. It asks: "Are there any promising signs?"

Afterward comes the California Building Industry Association with a 2009 forecast in the first week of January.

Mortgage interest rates are back on the downswing side of their continuing volatility. Fixed-rate 30-year loan rates dipped to 6.20 percent early this week, down from 6.46 percent last week. (Last week's sudden rise was from 6.04 percent the week before that, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac.)

Financial Web site Bankrate.com pegged overnight rates even lower Thursday, at 6.03 percent. At one point Tuesday afternoon, Sacramento-based Comstock Mortgage reported rates had fallen by one-quarter of one percent in just a few hours.

Rates have been extremely jumpy, rising and falling on the economic news of the day. Freddie Mac economists said they fell this week "amid new indications of a pullback in consumer spending and a weaker jobs market."

Meanwhile, a new 2008 survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association shows that caution and conservatism are definitively back in vogue among borrowers.

• Fixed-rate 30-year mortgages accounted for 78.5 percent of home loan dollar volume during the first half of this year, the MBA said. That's up from 63.6 percent the second half of 2007.

Remember when? During parts of the housing boom, almost three-fourths of Sacramento-area mortgages were adjustable-rate loans.

• Old-fashioned prime loans were 82.7 percent of all mortgage activity the first half of this year. Subprime loans, which accounted for 20 percent of mortgages in 2005 and 2006, according to the Federal Reserve, fell to 3.8 percent.

The old days of all pedal and no brakes are certainly gone.

Well, it's true that banks are finally rewriting more loan terms to help borrowers avoid foreclosure. But there are plenty more discounted repos to arrive in the market, says an auction company executive.

"I think (the modifications) will definitely slow down the short-term pace of foreclosures," said Mike Davis, president of transaction services for Los Angeles-based Zetabid. "But there is so much excess inventory still out there that auctions are going to be held two or three more years."

Zetabid is one of the newest auctioneers in this lucrative real estate arena. The firm has scheduled a regional event in Stockton on Nov. 22 to auction 80 homes foreclosed in Sacramento, Stockton and Modesto.

It starts at 10 a.m. at the Sheraton Waterfront Hotel.

Zetabid has two other auctions in the region this month. One is for 80 Bay Area repos in San Ramon on Nov. 20. Another is for 60 San Joaquin Valley repos in Fresno on Nov. 23.

"There is still a lot of inventory left to clear," Davis said.

Call The Bee's Jim Wasserman, (916) 321-1102. Read his blog on real estate, Home Front, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.