Economist in US property recovery prediction

A US economist has suggested that the US property market could be around the bottom.

The US Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory economist Henry Spelter suggested in a research paper that the slump could be "closer to the end than the beginning", the Vancouver Sun reports.

Mr Spelter emphasised that greater credit flows, rising incomes and economic recovery would be the main factors driving the bounceback.

Such a prediction may suggest that those who do buy real estate in the USA now will be doing so at or near the bottom of the market.

In other research, it has been suggested that the downturn in the Minnesotan twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul is fading.

Although the number of new home sales in the year to September 2008 was lower than the previous 12 months, Ryan Jones of demographic research body Metrostudy remarked: "It is one of the mildest year-over-year declines recorded since 2005."