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The slide in house prices eased in April, underscoring signs the economy began to stabilize in the second quarter, while a drop in consumer confidence this month warned of a muted recovery.

"We are not out of the woods yet, but it’s moving in the right direction," said Ian Morris, chief U.S. economist at HSBC Securities USA Inc. in New York. "The recession may already be over. Unfortunately, not all the pain goes away because the next phase is the jobless recovery."

The Conference Board’s confidence gauge decreased to 49.3 from a revised 54.8 in May, the New York-based research group said. The figure was still above a record low of 25.3 reached in February.

Delinquency rates on the least risky mortgages more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision said. Prime loans 60 days or more past due climbed to 2.9 percent of all mortgages through March 31 from 1.1 percent at the same point in 2008, signaling government efforts to help homeowners failed to keep pace with job losses that pushed more borrowers toward foreclosure payday loan no faxing.
Another report from the Institute for Supply Management showed its business barometer climbed to 39.9 in June, the second-highest level in the last nine months.

Economists forecast that the house-price index would drop 18.6 percent following an 18.7 percent decline in the 12 months to March, according to the median projection of 33 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The house-price index figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal effects so economists prefer to focus on year-over-year changes instead of month-to-month. The measure was down 0.6 percent in April from the prior month, the best performance since June 2008. Eight of the 20 cities showed an increase in prices from March, led by a 1.7 percent gain in Dallas.

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