Karl Case, economics professor at Wellesley College, has recently indicated that the data from his Case/Schiller Home Price Index is showing a slowdown in the drop of home prices nationwide.

He was quoted in this week's Banker and Tradesman:

"Anybody who tells you they know the market will bottom is delusional, but anybody who denies there are huge positives out there that could make the housing market bottom fairly soon is equally delusional."

Case goes on to say that real estate markets look similar now to how they looked at the bottom of other real estate downturns in the past and he is especially interested in California where it looks like the market is flattening.

"California is the linchpin and so if the region flattens, that changes everything."

Professor Case is highly regarded as one of the preeminent housing economists in the country, so his comments on the housing market are always watched closely.  We've also seem some indications of this bottoming out in Massachusetts as well.  Whether or not we are looking at a bottom nationally will become clearer over the next few months, but it interesting to see there are some indications of that in the data from Case.