More than half of real estate agents who responded to a survey believe the national real estate market will hit bottom in the first six months of 2009, according to the Campbell Communications marketing research firm.
Fifty-two percent of agents said the country will see the bottom of the housing market before July, 7.7 percent said prices have already bottomed out, and 16.5 percent believed the bottom will happen in 2010 or later.
"When you get to March, you're really entering into the spring-summer homebuying season, and that's when sales pick up," said Thomas Popik, who designed the survey for Campbell Communications. "I think a lot of them feel intuitively that as sales pick up, prices are also going to firm up or solidify at that point."
The survey of more than 2,500 agents also identified the three most resilient markets nationally for home sales. They are Texas, North Carolina and Washington state, where property prices haven't declined very much and employment has held up, Popik said.
Nationwide in September and October, individuals made up 59 percent of home sellers. But they faced significant competition from distressed real estate, with 29 percent of the properties being bank-owned and 12 percent being short sales. Bank-owned properties have usually been through a foreclosure, and short sales are used by sellers to avoid a foreclosure.
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