While homeownership has often been cited as the American dream, more would-be buyers are calling foul, saying that, in many cases, renting is the more financially prudent path. In an American Public Radio segment, one couple said that some people pity them because they rent rather than buy, in part because they equate renting with penny-pinching and buying with financial bounty. Nicolas Retsinas, head of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, said that there is often a stigma attached to renting. “Rent could be, not to be too glib… a four-letter word,” Retsinas said. But with about a quarter of U.S. homes underwater, and expected to make that list this year, financial experts say that renters may have the last laugh.

Signals for the housing market are mixed, Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, told Bloomberg — an improvement over the situation six months ago, when all the signs for housing were negative. Federal and state tax credits are helping the market, but it’s still too soon to declare a housing recovery. Employment needs to stabilize before the housing market can recover, Retsinas said. Recovery is closer in markets that are not yet overbuilt, such as the Northeast. In other markets, such as the Southwest, recovery could be more than a year away. [more]

Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and former assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Planning, said on Bloomberg News not to expect a housing upturn any time soon. Retsinas said that as long as there are foreclosures and job losses, the housing market will continue to decline. While the Obama administration has introduced aggressive loan modification programs to help people pay their mortgages, Retsinas said he is not sure if these programs will withstand increasing job losses and be effective. He said that preventing job losses and foreclosures, not just loan modifications, should be part of the main focus of government initiatives. As long as homes continue to be foreclosed on, the housing market won’t stabilize.