Housing market to hit bottom this year: former RealtyTrac exec

[[Update 1: Corrects delinquent loan figure and date that market expected to bottom out]] The U.S. housing market will hit bottom this year and remain flat until 2014, when it will start to slowly recover, said Rick Sharga, an executive vice president with Carrington Mortgage Holdings. “We’re looking at a catfish recovery,” he told attendees at the Asian Real Estate Association of America conference in San Francisco Friday, saying the market will bump along the bottom for some time before starting to revive. More than a million foreclosure actions that should have taken place this year have not yet moved forward, and that delay pushes a resolution of the housing market’s problems into next year and beyond, he said, citing data from RealtyTrac, where Sharga served as a senior vice president until this week. “We can’t expect to see home price appreciation until we work through these distressed assets,” he said. Since 2005, there’s only been one quarter in which U.S. banks have sold more properties than they’ve taken back through foreclosure, leaving a huge overhang of real estate-owned assets that need to be cleared out. Banks hold about 800,000 REOs, and three-quarters of those are not listed for sale, said Sharga. Another 800,000 homes are in foreclosure and 3.5 million loans are delinquent. This “shadow inventory” will slow down a housing market recovery, he said, as monthly foreclosure numbers will remain elevated through 2012 and REO inventories will stay high through 2013. Even with the continuing distress in the housing market, the country is not likely to enter a double-dip recession, said Eugenio Aleman, a director and senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co (WFC). Although U.S. workers have suffered as the nation has lost 9 million jobs over a two-year period, the manufacturing and service sectors are expanding, he noted. “The rest of the economy is not booming, but it’s doing fine,” said Aleman. Wells Fargo is projecting that the U.S. economy will expand over the next few years, but at anemic rates: 1.6% this year, 1.4% in 2012 and 1.9% in 2013. “We are standing firm,” said Aleman of Wells Fargo’s economic forecast. “We are not going to go into a recession.” Write to Liz Enochs.