Tampa Bay home prices are still overvalued and probably won't bottom until early to mid 2010, according to economists speaking today at a National Association of Home Builders forecasting conference.

Continued high unemployment, competition from foreclosure homes and the disappearance of the federal home buyer tax credit could all depress prices heading into the end of the year. Here's some quick facts I've pulled from the conference:

• The home price trough will be in the first or second quarter of 2010, according to a rough consensus of economists surveyed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
• Mark Zandi, economists with Moody's economy.com, dubbed Tampa Bay home prices "overvalued." It could be worse. Much of the Washington, D.C. to Boston corridor was labeled "significantly overvalued." Surprisingly, Zandi rated housing in Sarasota and Orlando "undervalued."
•  Anti-foreclose loan modifications have largely been a bust. Mark Vitner, economist with Wells Fargo bank, presented the more pessimistic statistics. He said 94 percent of modified mortgages will be back in foreclosure in 3 months. That sounds too high to me. Zandi cited less alarming figures. He said almost 60 percent of home loans are delinquent within 6 months of modification.
• Vitner predicted a further 4.5 percent decline in home prices coming toward the end of the year. He said the anchor on the market will be expensive homes that sell for nowhere near seller expectations. That's happening here already in millionaire enclave's like Tampa's Avila neighborhood.
• New home sizes are shrinking after peak at about 2,300 square feet in 2006. This year the typical newly built home is nearly 2,100 square feet. That's still much bigger than the boxes our parents and grandparents lived in.
• Vitner doesn't expect home construction to return to relative normalcy until the tail end of 2011. That's because he expects a "jobless recovery" in which unemployment remains stubbornly high over 10 percent nationally.
• Another economist, Joe Prakken, though Vitner was being too negative. He thinks housing will actually provide an immediate lift to the economy and that employment will shoot up like it did following the 1981 recession, helping sustain home prices.