As the housing market struggles to keep pace with economic recovery elsewhere, homeowners would love to have a crystal ball.
 
Absent that, however, they have AEI resident fellow Edward J. Pinto, one of seven panelists to be awarded with Zillow and Pulsenomics' Crystal Ball Award for offering clear and consistent vision for the past two years on home price expectations.
 
Pinto, an executive vice president and chief credit officer for Fannie Mae until the late 1980s, was among more than 100 panelists to provide a studied prediction over the eight fiscal quarters of 2010 and 2011 on the direction of home pricing.
 
Data from the panelists were then compared in each quarter of the two years against actual annual home price changes, provided by the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index.  Pinto was one of only five participants who ranked in the “Top 10” for all three time frames measured -- 2010, 2011 and a combined ranking for the two years. Of the three rankings, Pinto twice came in second.
 
According to Terry Loebs, founder and managing member of Pulsenomics LLC, the Crystal Ball winners’ “informed perspective” -- reflected in their home price expectations – is a highly valuable tool for housing policymakers, government regulators, financial institutions, asset and risk managers, market strategists and analysts, academics, investors and individual homeowners who use Pulsenomics data.
 
Pinto has done groundbreaking research on the role of government housing policies in the lead-up to the financial crisis -- with an emphasis on the contributions of housing policy to the mortgage crisis.  At AEI, Pinto is continuing his work on the role of housing policies in the financial crisis and researching policy considerations and options for rebuilding the housing-finance sector. 
 
Check out Pinto's work -- and the reason he earns the Crystal Ball Award -- on his scholar page at AEI.org. Among some of his notable studies are two major research papers submitted to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: "Government Housing Policies in the Lead-up to the Financial Crisis: A Forensic Study" and "Triggers of the Financial Crisis." Pinto also pens FHA Watch, of which March's edition is out now.