NEW YORK (AP) - Donald J. Tomnitz said what most others in the housing business wouldn't when he proclaimed on Wednesday that 2007 "is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year."
The blunt assessment by the CEO of D.

H. Horton Inc., the largest homebuilder in the U.

S., contrasted with much of the spin that has been coming from lenders, realtors, trade groups, home builders and others in recent months. There haven't been many straight shooters discussing the housing and mortgage market collapse.

That's why Tomnitz's quote resonated throughout the financial world. Plain and simple, he told it like it is, at least from his point of view.
In his presentation to an investor conference, Tomnitz said new home prices will continue to decline this year as builders try to sell the glut of houses currently available.

His firm is unlikely to get more pricing power until 2008, he said.
Horton is currently building 26,000 houses in the U.S.

, down 35 per cent from its peak of 40,000. Tomnitz said that further cuts are coming.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based company's fourth-quarter earnings plunged by almost two-thirds from a year earlier to $109.

7 million, and a profit retreat of similar size is expected in the first quarter as well.
His sugarless comments stood out because others haven't been so forthcoming. That doesn't mean there hasn't been talk of the housing or mortgage business going south, but little has been so direct and to the point.

Bloggers have been quick to pounce on the National Association of Realtors for spinning its assessment of housing conditions.
For instance, last summer NAR chief economist David Lereah said that new home sales were "stabilizing." But that turned out to be untrue, a result of the trade group relying too heavily on economic data and underestimating how psychological factors were affecting home purchasing, said NAR spokesman Walter Molony.

It still hasn't perfected its game. This week, blogger Debi Averett of Phoenix-based HousingDoom.com, noted that the NAR's pending home sales report says that the data should be compared on a year-over-year basis, not month to month.

But the first number that the NAR plays up is the Pending Home Sales Index's 4.1 per cent decline in January from the month before. It then says the index was down 8.

9 per cent from a year ago. The NAR also highlighted that the January reading was the highest since last August and "more importantly" there has been a narrowing trend from year-ago levels since last July.
"When the year-over-year and month-over-month don't suit the spin, apparently showing that things are not looking as bad as they did six months ago is the expedient alternative," Averett said on her blog, which discusses issues in the declining real-estate market.

NAR's Lereah, when asked for comment, said the trade group would consider raising the year-over-year figures in its next report. He noted that its existing home sales report leads with monthly sales, and that will eventually become the basis for the pending sales report after more years of data are collected.
The imploding U.

S. mortgage market has seen its fair share of spin, too. With subprime lending collapsing fast, anyone linked to that business is running for cover.

Economist Nouriel Roubini says some banks might be downplaying their involvement in loans to individuals with shaky credit. He believes that many banks engaged in "highly cosmetic accounting" in how they actually defined subprime candidates - meaning that they gave loans to individuals with credit scores that were technically subprime, but didn't count them as such. Therefore, their exposure for now seems limited.

In addition, the increased use of creative loans - such as adjustable-rate, interest-only or piggyback - across the spectrum of all mortgages broadens the potential fallout from the industry's meltdown.
"Garbage is garbage, whatever you name it," said Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business and chairman of the consulting firm Roubini Global Economics.

That's something to consider when listening to what Countrywide Financial Corp.'s CFO had to say this week. He discussed on Tuesday why its lending business - which includes about 9 per cent in subprime loans - has lasting power compared with others that just focused on loans to individuals with shaky credit.

"We're a top-conditioned athlete," Countrywide CFO Eric Sieracki said at an investor conference.
But the Calabasas, Calif.-based company isn't entirely protected either.

According to a recent securities filing, 19 per cent of its subprime mortgage loans were late in 2006. That's up from 15.2 per cent at the end of 2005 and 11.

3 per cent at the end of 2004.
The mortgage lender also said that payments were at least 30 days late on 2.93 per cent of the prime home-equity loans it services, up from 1.

57 per cent a year ago and 0.8 per cent in 2004. It also said that it originated $40.

5 billion in subprime mortgages in 2006, four times the $9.4 billion in 2002.
Maybe Horton's Tomnitz gave a bleak assessment to set expectations as low as they can go.

That sounds better than saying things are going fine, when they might not be.

The CBC and the NHL announced a new television deal Monday that will keep Hockey Night in Canada on the air until 2014.