WASHINGTON, March 7 (UPI) -- Residential housing experts say they're afraid this spring's U.S. home-buying season will be even grimmer than last year's disappointing showing.
Analysts say the housing market has a ways to go before hitting bottom despite small signs of recovery in hard hit states such as California and Florida, The New York Times reported Saturday.
The numbers portend a March-to-June home selling season that will perhaps be the worst since the market began to spiral down in 2006, experts said. As the recession deepens, U.S. cities where home values had been holding up are now suffering, while prices are slowly starting to improve in some hard-hit suburban areas, the Times said.
Home sales fell nationally in January, spurred by sharply tougher times in the U.S. Northeast, which, along with parts of the U.S. Northwest and South, hadn't seen the kinds of real estate downturns evidenced in the Southwest and Florida, the newspaper said.
