Homeowners wonder how long until their home values rebound

Forecasts for both the overall U.S. economy and housing market suggest that many homeowners will have to wait years before their properties will be worth what they were before the housing bubble burst in 2007. Some experts anticipate home prices will not show a full recovery for the next 20 years.

In an interview with The Street, Mike Cosgrove, principal at Econoclast research firm, said the housing market will take longer than the equity market to recovery from the recession.

"In the housing market, without really high inflation numbers, we're talking about a decade, maybe a decade and a half or two decades before someone who bought around the peak ever recovers," Cosgrove told the source.

Cosgrove expects an average GDP growth of 2.5 percent over the next five years, and inflation of about 3 percent. The news source reported that a recovery is defined by economists as a stabilization in home prices, where they no longer continue to drop.

American homeowners appear to be just as optimistic for the housing market in the upcoming years. A recent Rasmussen Report found 40 percent of U.S. homeowners expect the value of their homes to go down over the next year, marking the highest level of pessimism to date. However, 36 percent of respondents believe their home values will go up during the next five years, while 24 percent think housing values will decrease during the same time period. 

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