Some economists will admit that their real estate forecasts are more guesswork than science and about a likely to be right or wrong as the nightly weather report.

But barring some unforeseen global economic catastrophe (hello, Europe), there’s consensus from many economists that this year should see a slowly improving national economy. While home prices are expected to dip nationally, they should be flat-to-improving in the San Antonio area.

“In general, Texas and the Plains states have been stable throughout the boom and bust,” said David Stiff, chief economist and vice president of quantitative research with Fiserv.

Here are five things economists say you can expect in 2012:

An improving national economy, which makes people feel better about home purchases.

Texas outperforming the national economy.

The continuation of low mortgage interest rates.

Filling out lots of paperwork for mortgage loan documentation.

Low inventory levels that could, just maybe, set the stage for price increases.

Car sales = home sales

On a national level, Stiff said improving auto sales numbers are a good signal for housing.

Homes and cars are both among the biggest purchases people will ever make. So economists think that if people feel confident enough to buy new cars, they’re also feeling good enough about the economy and their jobs to buy new homes.

“Our expectation is that this year the job market will really start to improve,” Stiff said. “People will feel more confident purchasing expensive items like cars and homes. At the end of last year we saw both consumer confidence and auto sales start to move upward. It’s hard to say that it’s a sustained trend for the next two to three years, but it was a really hopeful sign.”

Stiff also said he thinks the risk of a double-dip recession has dissipated.

“We’re optimistic for the U.S. as a whole,” he said. “There will be some metro areas that will still be swamped by foreclosures and will have a hard time, like Vegas, some Florida cities or Phoenix.” Other parts of the country not at the epicenter of the foreclosure mess, though, should do fine in 2012, he said.

The Texas market

Home prices haven’t been rising much. The median price in San Antonio last year rose by just 1 percent.

But many other cities across the country have seen prices fall by double digit percentages.

“Basically San Antonio prices seem to be more of less flat, and compared to the rest of the U.S., that is actually pretty good,” Stiff said.

Texas had limits on home equity lending, which Stiff said helped the state avoid much of the housing bubble. “In the bubble states, a lot of the home purchases were financed with a first mortgage and a piggyback loan that added up to more than the home value,” Stiff said. “Texas avoided that. It really limited the possibility for the bubble.”

He also thinks that people in Texas “had a memory of the home price crash in the ’80s,” and that helped the state avoid going head over heels for real estate.

Now, Stiff and others expect Texas to continue outperforming the U.S. as a whole.

Paperwork, but low rates

But qualifying for a mortgage and surviving the paperwork gantlet won’t get any easier in 2012. Buyers need a strong credit score, a healthy down payment and organized financial files.

“There’s no letup in the amount of regulation,” said Bob Gardner of Legacy Mutual Mortgage. “Documentation is very important. That’s not going away.”

Gardner said homebuyers and people refinancing loans can expect strict standards to last for about a decade, a cycle that the market is only about three years into now.

And Stiff said he thinks mortgage interest rates, already below 4 percent for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan, could drop lower.

“I think we’ll see lower rates by the summer,” he said. “The Federal Reserve hasn’t said they’ll have a third round of quantitative easing yet. If they do that, mortgage rates would continue to go down.”

Lower inventory

San Antonio ended 2011 with about 6.6 months of inventory, the lowest level since early 2008, according to the Real Estate Center at Texas AM University.

And there were fewer than 10,000 existing homes on the market, Gardner said. “This is the lowest level it’s been in a number of years,” Gardner said. “We haven’t seen that environment in a long time.”

Gardner said the dropping inventory level could mean that prices could start to rise later this year or early in 2013. “It puts a sense of urgency in the market we haven’t seen in quite a while,” he said.

Gardner said the area he’s watching most closely is Alamo Heights. With sales at around $184 per square foot in 2011, Alamo Heights represents the city’s most valuable neighborhood for residential real estate.

If prices move there, it could signal that prices will move in other high-end neighborhoods, and throughout the rest of the city.

“That is the most important high-end market of any in the San Antonio area,” Gardner said. “If we’re going to see a big push in values, we’re going to see it first in Alamo Heights.”

jhiller@express-news.net