When do you predict the housing market to turn around?

Q: When do you predict the housing market to turn around?

A: There are already signs that pockets here and there are starting to recover; that said, many areas won't fully recover for years yet.

To help you follow these trends, we do provide regular outlooks for mortgages and housing. On a long-range basis, we wrote a 2012 Outlook which covers a range of topics, from what we think about home-sales trends to home prices and foreclosures (as well as bunch of other topics).

On a more near-term note, we have a regular Two-month forecast for mortgage rates; in it, we largely focus on economic issues which influence mortgage rates, but their effects on home purchases and refinances is almost always a component of the topics being discussed.

Each week, we write a weekly Market Trends newsletter. We cover the latest economic reports, including new and existing homes sales, the latest trends in mortgage rates, Fed policies and policy changes, housing market initiatives and lots more. You can stay up to speed by visiting HSH.com to read the latest edition or have it emailed to your inbox every Friday, free of charge.

There is no simple answer to your question, though. The health of a local real estate market -- even price support for a given property – depends upon very local factors such as jobs, schools, transportation networks and amenities like shopping and cultural events. It bears noting, though, that nothing lasts forever, even real estate downturns which are nearly unprecedented in length.