Housing Falters as Forecasters See U.S. Sales Drop: Mortgages

The two-year-old U.S. housing recovery is faltering.

The Mortgage Bankers Association lowered its new and existing home sales forecast for 2014 to 5.28 million — a decrease of 4.1 percent that would be the first annual drop in four years. The industry group also cut its prediction on mortgage lending volume for purchases to $751 billion, an 8.7 percent decline and the first retreat in three years.

Bullish forecasts in early 2014 from MBA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been sideswiped by rising home prices and an economy that isn’t producing higher paying jobs.

The share of Americans who said they planned to buy a home in the next six months plunged to 4.9 percent last month from 7.4 percent at the end of 2013, the highest in records going back to 1964, according to the Conference Board, a research firm in New York.

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