Real-estate updated

WASHINGTON - Housing prices, slumping after a five-year boom, are projected to decline in half of the nation's metropolitan areas, with the Northeast, Florida and California among the areas hardest hit.

The forecast by Moody's Economy.com, a private research firm, presents one of the starkest views yet of the housing slowdown that has been gathering force in recent months.

The West Chester, Pa., forecasting firm projects that the median sales price for an existing home will decline in 2007 by 3.6 percent, which would be the first decline for an entire year in home prices since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The forecast is included in a 195-page report, "Housing at the Tipping Point," which The Associated Press obtained before its general release on Wednesday.

The report projected that 133 of the nation's 279 metropolitan areas would suffer price declines. That is quite a contrast from the past five years when low mortgage rates pushed sales to five consecutive annual records and prices in the hottest sales areas skyrocketed.