n fact, as Bloomberg News notes, prices have fallen by the biggest amount in 40 years. Of course, that means that many people now live in homes with mortgages larger than their values. Supply far outstrips demand in many markets, and at least some experts don’t believe that the market has hit bottom.

“It looks like this may be a temporary pause,” Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at Global Insight Inc., told Bloomberg, “The price declines have helped.”

“We’re not expecting a notable gain in existing-home sales until the second half of this year, but the improvement is another sign that the market is stabilizing,” National Association of Realtors economist Lawrence Yun told The Wall Street Journal.

While the 2.9% gain over January’s figures was better than what economists had expected, the figures were down 24% compared with the same period a year earlier. It will be a buyers’ market for quite some time.

–Freelance writer Jonathan Berr edits the blog Ketchup and Eggs

Socratic Gadfly comments on house price declin saying:

Consumer confidence hit afive-year low. And here’s the worst part — economic analysts were far off on their predictions:

The Conference Board, a business-backed research group, said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index plunged to 64.5 in March from a revised 76.4 in February. The March reading was far below the 73.0 expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson/IFR.

High gas prices, combined with the continued housing slump, are likely the top culprits. And, speaking of “continued housing slump,” U.S. big-city home prices

were off 11.4 percent in January. It’s the sharpest drop since such information started being collected in 1987

The decline, reported today in the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index, means prices have been growing more slowly or dropping for 19 consecutive months, the story reports.