With home pricing fluctuating wildly, it's always good to know where we've come from (most owners know what their home was worth at the height of the market), know where we are right now, and forecast where we are going. Sellers all too often OVERPRICE their home at the outset thinking they are giving themselves negotiating room and are left emptyhanded 3 -4 months later when they are following the market down in terms of pricing.

Here's a little "foresight" into where your home value was, is, and may be in 2010 and 2011. In the example below, I will use a foreclosure in my neighborhood (to protect the guilty who over-mortgaged themself).

1) First, visit Zillow.com and type in your address. Click on home details, scroll down, and select "5 YEAR GRAPH"...the peak of the housing market was in mid 2007 and the graph will show the highest price. Zillow says the highest value in 2006 for this home was $366,000.

2) Per a St. Pete Times article on December 30, 2008, citing the National Case-Schiller Index, values in Tampa Bay have fallen 30.5% from the peak in July of 2006 (Value #1). That makes the value at the end of 2008 at $254,370 (which is extremely accurate for my neighborhood)

3) An article "Economists: US Home Prices Likely to Fall Another 10 Percent" by Barry Wood, Voice of America, 10/22/2008, forecast an additional 10% value loss for 2009. That puts the homes appr value at $229,000 towards the end of 2009.

4) Research from the University of Michigan on the real estate sector of the US Economy, 11/20/2008, forecasts "Prices will bottom out in late 2009…and then edge up by just 1 percent during 2010." The 2010 value of the example home wwould then be $231,000.

5) If we resume our historical real estate growth, "median existing-home sale prices have increased on average 6.5 percent each year from 1972 through 2005" according to the National Association of Realtors. Let's assume this is correct, although I see this as highly unlikely given our present circumstances. The value in 2011, at 6.5% annual growth, would be $246,000.

If you are selling and you are able to lower your price, do so. Otherwise, you may be a homeowner until 2011, over 2 years from now.