Forecasters who are looking ahead to 2008 see greener homes, high-tech comfort, and still-flat market.

Here are three key trends in the housing market that they observe:

* The color of the year is green. Surveys indicate that people will pay up to $5,000 for “greening” a home, says David Pratt, a principal in the Lorax Partnership consulting firm and president of the Baltimore chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council. “Green is in because there is a higher level of awareness now of the issues surrounding the environment and, specifically, global warming.”

* High-tech comfort is in. Demand is on the upswing for amenities such as massaging bubble jets in tubs, mirrors with built-in, vanishing television screens,; super-quiet garbage disposals that are heavy-duty enough to crunch most dinner waste, dual-temperature beverage centers (warmer for wine, cooler for soda), and gas fireplaces with battery backups so they generate heat when the power goes out. “People are nesting and putting nice stuff in their houses,” says Brett Schoolnick, president of the Baywood Design & Build Group in Columbia, Md.

* Home prices will continue to fall. “The buyer has become disengaged from this market. They think prices will fall. So they wait to purchase. Then that puts downward pressure on the market,” says Anirban Basu, chief executive of the Sage Policy Group, “My sense is that the bottom of the housing market is likely to arrive sometime after 2008.”

via: The Baltimore Sun, Andrea F. Siegel