A new analysis suggests that home prices will begin to rise later this year. It’s been a rough five and a half years for the American homeowner. Since the housing bubble reached its peak in early 2007, Americans have watched helplessly as $7 trillion in housing wealth evaporated. At many points during this ugly plunge, pundits have erroneously called the “bottom” of the housing market – saying things could finally get no worse. And then they got worse. The American public can therefore be forgiven for eyeing the latest round of predictions that the market has turned a corner with skepticism.  Of course, the housing market will heal at some point, so perhaps the boy is crying about an actual wolf this time. The best reason to shed your hard-won dubiousness is a report issued today by the The Demand Institute, a think tank jointly operated by the well-respected and non-partisan research organizations The Conference Board and Nielsen. The fifty-page study is definitively labeling 2012 the year of the housing bottom. It says: “The double-digit increases in U.S.housing prices over the first half of the past decade proved unsustainable. But the freefall is over. The point has been reached where housing prices will start to climb, albeit at single-digit rates in most markets over the next five years.” Perhaps most crucial to The Demand Institute’s vision for a recovering housing market is evidence that Americans are still strongly attracted to the idea of homeownership. “The American Dream has not gone away,” adding: “The majority of Americans think that owning a home is a good investment; the majority of people who plan to move in the next six years plan to buy a house even if they’re not currently homeowners. There are several pieces of evidence that lead us to believe that we’ll see a rise back to home ownership levels that we saw in the mid ’90s and early 2000s.” Read the entire article at Time | By Christopher Matthews | Posted May 15, 2012 Renaissance Homes is an award winning Street of Dreams custom home builder specializing in green building, remodeling and renovations for the Portland market. Awarded the Portland Homebuilder’s Association 2011 “Builder of the Year.”