Predicting home prices – where’d that $500 billion go?

At Reality Check Diane Olick reports on the difficulty housing experts are having arriving at any consensus on the direction and scale of housing price movements.

The jaundiced-eye look from one source:

“Although still positive, the average outlook for five-year cumulative home price appreciation fell in July for the second consecutive month, and is now in single-digit territory,” writes Terry Loebs, MacroMarkets Managing Director. “This new consensus suggests a less robust housing recovery scenario – one that, all other things equal, would result in U.S. household wealth by year-end 2014 being about $500 billion less than the level implied by the average of panelist responses just two months ago.”