Wondering when the national housing market might stabilize? Freddie Mac's chief economist said Thursday you'll be waiting until 2010, according to a McClatchy story by Kevin G. Hall.

One piece of good news: New home construction is expected to dwindle to the point that supply will finally catch up with demand.

Here's the story:

U.S. home prices are unlikely to recover until at least 2010, one of the nation’s top housing economists said Thursday, adding that home building this year is likely to post its worst year in five decades.

Speaking to the National Economists Club, Frank Nothaft, the chief economist for government-sponsored mortgage buyer Freddie Mac, painted a grim picture of today’s housing market.

Through the final three months of 2007, he said, sales of existing homes were down 29 percent from the same period two years earlier. Forty-six states had falling home prices in the fourth quarter, and prices nationwide were down 9.3 percent. In the Pacific region, which saw the steepest drop, prices fell an average of 17.2 percent, followed by mountain states, whose home prices fell an average of 12.9 percent.

"I don’t think we’re going to see any improvement in the national house-price matrix until 2010," said Nothaft, a respected government economist who’s followed the national housing market for more than two decades.

=> Read more!