U.S. Home Prices May Fall 11% This Year, Morgan Stanley Says

U.S. home prices will fall 6 percent to 11 percent this year, more than previously forecast, as mortgages become harder to obtain and distressed sales drive down values, according to Morgan Stanley.

Prices will have lost as much as 39 percent from their 2006 peak through the first half of 2012, according to measures such as the S&P/Case-Shiller index, analysts Oliver Chang in San Francisco and Vishwanath Tirupattur and James Egan in New York said today in a report. Morgan Stanley previously estimated values would drop 35 percent from the peak.