Researchers at Houston-based Metrostudy said Monday that low interest rates and dwindling new-home supplies mean housing prices should end their year-long skid by mid-2008. But homeowners in Las Vegas shouldn't expect values to stop declining until early 2009, said Josh Seime, manager of Metrostudy's Las Vegas division.

That's because the local market has yet to see the worst of rising housing inventories, thanks to a home-foreclosure surge that will likely continue into the second quarter.

Local observers say Metrostudy's forecast is too pessimistic.

Devin Reiss, president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, said his trade group's numbers show inventory is already flattening.

Realtors listed 22,005 single-family homes on the association's Multiple Listing Service in December, down from 23,494 units in November. And where inventory is steady, said Reiss, prices should stay relatively constant.

Foreclosures remain the wild card in figuring future prices, Reiss said. If mortgage defaults rise substantially in coming months, expect the number of homes on the market to jump and prices to drop.

Brian Gordon of Applied Analysis, a local economic research firm, said equilibrium should return to the local housing market by late 2008 for two reasons: Homeowners who have listed houses will pull those properties off the market to avoid further price cuts, and the resort sector is set to begin a hiring push for thousands of jobs.

The biggest planned megaresorts -- CityCenter and Echelon -- won't open before 2009, Gordon acknowledged, but several smaller properties need workers now. The Strip's Trump International Hotel & Tower, with 1,300 suites, must hire for its March 31 opening. Palms Place, a 600-unit condo-hotel west of the Palms, will open in early March. Locals casino Aliante Station is scheduled to open in North Las Vegas in late 2008. Encore at Wynn Las Vegas is also set to launch later this year. Plus, resorts coming online in 2009 will begin recruiting workers by the end of 2008.

All that job growth should translate into higher housing demand, Gordon said.

"We are seeing (hiring) activity," he said. "It will take some time to work through current surplus of housing inventory, but we expect to start seeing improvements by the end of the year."

Metrostudy's analysts, however, said they see too many troublesome indicators to predict local housing improvements before 2009.

Unemployment in Las Vegas reached 5.6 percent in December, up from 4.2 percent in December 2006. That points to stagnant economic growth and a resulting slowdown in housing demand, Seime said.

What's more, the Las Vegas area had 27,513 resale listings -- a 16.1-month supply -- on the market at the fourth quarter's close. The city also had 15,840 condominiums, or a 26.5-month supply, for sale at the end of the quarter. The stock of developed single-family lots ready for new construction hit 31,194 parcels. That's a 29.2-month inventory.

Combine those ample stores of available homes with a traditional spring rise in listings and sustained gains in foreclosure rates, and you have a formula for "new highs" in local housing supplies through the middle of 2008, Seime said. Inventory should then even out.

A mid-year ceiling on housing supply won't rein in prices until the first half of 2009 because the market will have a year or more of inventory in several submarkets.

It's not all doom and gloom, though: Builders have restrained new-home inventory, creating a supply of less than six months. And with 6,000 new residents a month moving into town, Las Vegas remains one of the country's fastest-growing cities.

"Las Vegas continues to have the underpinnings necessary to bolster demand for housing in the long term," Seime said.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or (702) 380-4512.