There's plenty of year left, but early predictions that the housing market would rebound in 2007 have so far fallen flat as more buyers bail and sellers wail.

Existing home sales appeared to roar in like a lion early this year, up 2.7 percent in January and then 3.4 percent in February, compared to 2006. But by spring, sales bleated a lamb-like retreat, shearing home prices in the process.

In March, existing home sales took their greatest beating in nearly 20 years, a bruising 8.4 percent decline over last year, the National Association of Realtors reported this week.

And prices, down 0.9 percent among single-family homes, show "no signs of turnaround," according to the latest Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which tracks home price trends. By February the index revealed persistent declines in home price trends.

In the latest report, thirteen of 20 large metro areas revealed a declining price trend and composites of 10 and 20 metros both reveal declining price trends.

"Home prices are exhibiting successive monthly declines," says Robert J. Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, a partner in the indices' production.

"The average consecutive negative monthly return of the 20 cities is 5 months, the 10-city composite is 8 months and the 20 city-composite is 7 months, indicating a widespread downward trend in home prices at the end of 2006 and into 2007," he added.

Miami, Charlotte and Dallas have alternated between modest price gains and losses from year to year with each passing month, but other cities, including San Francisco and Boston, have revealed persistent monthly declines since last spring.

In February, only Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Portland and Seattle revealed a trend of improving prices ranging from 1.3 percent increase in Dallas to 10.6 percent in Seattle.

The greatest decline was a 7.8 percent slip in Detroit. The smallest decline was 0.4 percent in Los Angeles.

NAR blamed "unusually bad winter weather" for putting the freeze on home shoppers, and said slower sales also "may have been dampened further by a decrease in subprime lending volume".

Based on the supply and sales pace the national market in March was stuffed with a 7.3-month supply of homes for sale, up from a 6.8-month supply in February, NAR reported.

In its breakout, NAR reported single-family home sales fell most over the year, down 9.5 percent annually, compared to condo sales which dipped only 6.7 percent. But as the median single-family home price dropped 0.9 percent, the median condo price rose 3.2 percent nationwide.

Regionally, the largest existing home sales drop was in the Midwest where they fell 10.9 percent, followed by the West, 9.1 percent; the Northeast, 8.2 percent and the South, down 6.2 percent.

The NAR remains bullish on 2007.

"It's too early to measure a significant impact from tighter lending standards, which should moderately dampen activity, but we're still looking for existing-home sales to gradually improve during the last half of 2007," said David Lereah, NAR's chief economist.

Published: April 25, 2007

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A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.