Robert Shiller on CNBC Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University and the co-founder of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, told CNBC, in the video after the jump, that while the housing market may have hit bottom, it also might stay there for awhile.

“We might be at the endgame,” Shiller told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan, who tries to frame Shiller’s sentiment positively, saying his statements provide “a little optimism, I think.” But the professor is notably reluctant to rejoice. The housing market “could turn around; I just don’t see any scientific way to be assured [that it will],” he said. [more]

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More than 100 economists, real estate experts and investment strategists projected the path of the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index over the next five years. And the forecast isn’t pretty.

According to the MacroMarkets survey released today, experts predict home prices will gain just 1.1 percent annually over the next five years.

“Expectations for home price performance in 2011 has become somewhat less negative,” said Robert Shiller, one of the creators of the Case-Shiller index and a co-founder of MacroMarkets. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Robert Shiller, the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale School of Management after whom the S&P’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index is named, said that President Barack Obama’s job stimulus plan is not sufficient in this time of crisis, and other Yale experts seem to agree.

The proposed stimulus, he said in the video above, does not go far enough.

“I think it was a little weak in terms of the crisis we’re going through. He gave the impression that this act would solve the problems. It would help some people, but it’s pretty limited in the overall impact, I believe, and it’s not really up to the magnitude of the problem. We have 14 million unemployed and there’s a risk that the economy is going to sink into recession, so we’ll have even more unemployed. And there’s a serious risk that this problem is going to continue for years.” [more]

Professors Karl Case and Robert Shiller, founders of the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Index appeared on Bloomberg TV (see above) to discuss the results of the most recent index, which showed a 3.3 percent decline in housing prices in February. Case said the U.S. housing market has already experienced a so-called “double-dip,” as housing prices plummeted from their 2006 highs, then rebounded briefly due to the homebuyer’s tax credit, and now the market has returned to previous lows. Case cited an “incredible decline” in households — “we’re not building any new houses, and yet vacancy rates are still going up,” he said — as a major area for concern. Meanwhile, Shiller said the 8.8 percent unemployment rate and the difficulties associated with getting financing are plaguing the market.

Most U.S. housing analysts now expect the market to hit bottom some time in 2012, marking yet another delay in the predicted rebound in nationwide home prices. According to the Wall Street Journal, a new survey by Robert Shiller’s MacroMarkets polled 111 economists and analysts, of whom just one one-third now believe home prices will rebound this year. When the company conducted the same survey last June, respondents predicted a 1.3 percent increase in home prices in 2011. Now, those respondents see that increase happening in 2012. One-half of respondents in the latest survey expect further price declines for the remainder of 2011. Among the most sobering responses came from Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who said he expects an 11 percent home price decline this year, and doesn’t see prices flattening until 2015. [WSJ]

While some experts believe the economic fallout from the devastating earthquake in Japan won’t effect the overall global market, Robert Shiller, co-founder of the Case-Shiller Index, which tracks real estate, thinks otherwise. Shiller says in the video above that there is a risk of “high volatility in the markets” following the disaster in Japan.

Innovation is lacking in current government-led efforts to fix the ailing housing market, Yale economist and home price index guru Robert Shiller argued in a recent interview with Smart Money. Comparing today’s housing market to that of the end of the Great Depression, Shiller said that while the Roosevelt administration created a number of new institutions that have since stuck (a national convention of long-term mortgages, for one), the Obama administration is “not really developing new things for the longer-run.” He noted that this is especially problematic, given that the ideas that came into being after World War II — like the 30-year mortgage and Fannie Mae — are no longer working in the contemporary economic environment. “One of my proposals is that we go to a mortgage that is more flexible. I call it a continuous workout mortgage that would protect people against unemployment or declines in home prices,” Shiller said. [Smart Money]

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While home prices were up nationwide in the second quarter of the year, economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com said we’re not quite through with the housing crash. We’ve got another 5 percent or so to go on house prices,” he said in the in the CBS Money Watch video above. Yale economist Robert Shiller noted that instead of focusing on the housing market, the country should be more concerned with creating jobs. “If we create jobs, I think that the mood of the country will change,” he said.

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While home prices were up nationwide in the second quarter of the year, economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com said we’re not quite through with the housing crash. We’ve got another 5 percent or so to go on house prices,” he said in the in the CBS Money Watch video above. Yale economist Robert Shiller noted that instead of focusing on the housing market, the country should be more concerned with creating jobs. “If we create jobs, I think that the mood of the country will change,” he said.

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Policy makers need to be more “inspirational” when designing solutions to the housing market crisis, according to Yale economist Robert Shiller, after whom the S&P’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index is named and which released its second quarter findings yesterday. Shiller noted that it did not make sense to extend the homebuyer tax credit, and that the responses by the Bush and Obama administrations have amounted to “patches and bailouts,” he told the Wall Street Journal. Shiller believes that the solution lies in more “forward thinking” measures. One suggestion he offered was that mortgages should be indexed to inflation to allow for greater long-term certainty for borrowers. Another idea was that mortgage contracts in the future should include some kind of “preplanned workout,” detailing how a loan modification would proceed if the borrower fell behind on payments. Though the Obama administration has launched a debate on how to overhaul Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it’s not clear how much that debate will focus on ideas like those suggested by Shiller. [WSJ]

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