Real-estate experts in Arizona are guarded but hopeful

No one at this year's Urban Land Institute conference predicted when metro Phoenix's housing market will rebound. The annual Arizona conference, where real-estate industry leaders convene and predict the market's movements, has been the most important summit on Valley real estate since the beginning of the housing boom nearly a decade ago. But this year, the conversations and atmosphere were different. The many experts who spoke were more low-key and pragmatic than they'd been during the last five years. Few offered any guesses at when home prices might rebound to boom levels. That may have been because so many past predictions have been wrong. At the conference in 2007, the forecast was for metro Phoenix home prices to recover to boom levels by 2010. Instead, prices continued to drop until late last year.

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