View Full Image Associated Press Weak demand and tight credit are contributing to the fall in home prices. Above, trying to sell in Atlanta. 
 
 Home values are falling at an accelerating rate in many cities across the U.S. 
 
 The Wall Street Journal's latest quarterly survey of housing-market conditions found that prices declined in all of the 28 major metropolitan areas tracked during the fourth quarter when compared to a year earlier. 
 
 The U.S. housing market may take five or six more years to recover, TrimTabs Investment Research warned recently. Madeline Schnapp, director of macroeconomic research at TrimTabs, talks to MarketWatch's Alistair Barr about what that means for the world's largest economy. 
 
 The size of the year-to-year price declines was greater than the previous quarter's in all but three of the markets, the latest indication that the housing market faces considerable challenges. 
 
 Inventory levels, meanwhile, are rising in many markets as the number of unsold homes piles up. 
 
 Home values dropped the most in cities that have already been hard-hit by the housing bust, including Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, and Chicago, according to data from real-estate website Zillow.com. But price declines also intensified in several markets that so far have escaped the brunt of the downturn, including Seattle and Portland, Ore. 
 
 Where Housing Is Headed See housing data for 28 major metro areas. 
 
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 Falling prices are a reflection of weak demand and tight credit conditions that reduce the number of potential buyers. 
 
 "There are just not a lot of renters with confidence, with a down payment, with good credit, and without a lot of additional debt," said John Burns, a homebuilder consultant in Irvine, Calif. 
 
 On the inventory front, New York's Long Island had enough homes on the market at the end of December to last 15 months at the average sales pace. The supply of unsold homes stood at 14 months in Charlotte, N.C., and Nashville, Tenn., and at nearly 13 months for northern New Jersey. 
 
 Markets are generally considered balanced when the supply is around six months. 
 
 A few markets, including Sacramento and San Diego, are seeing inventories fall to healthier levels as low prices spur interest from first-time buyers and investors, while others, such as Washington, D.C., and Boston, have been cushioned by more stable economies. 
 
 "We're still running at half speed," said Jeffrey Otteau, president of Otteau Valuation Group, an East Brunswick, N.J., appraisal firm. "Sales are below year-ago levels and inventory is higher than it was a year ago." Far-flung suburbs continue to fare worse than homes located closer to core metro centers, he says. 
 
 Economists say that the biggest risk to the housing market is that job growth doesn't pick up. "Without improvement in unemployment, confidence stays low. Purchasing stays low," says Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow. 
 
 Market conditions could get worse in the months ahead. Millions of homeowners are in some stage of foreclosure or are seriously delinquent on their mortgages, and millions more owe more than their homes are worth. 
 
 Real-estate agents are bracing for an uptick in distressed properties hitting the market, including foreclosures being sold by banks and homes sold by owners via a short sale, in which banks agree to a sale for less than the amount owed. 
 
 Sales of foreclosed homes are partly responsible for reducing home values because banks tend to reduce prices quickly to sell the homes. Sales of foreclosures slowed in some markets at the end of last year as document-handling problems raised questions about the integrity of their foreclosure processes. But that could change as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures. 
 
 Real-estate agents say that the threat of future price declines has led to a months-long standoff between buyers and sellers. 
 
 Sellers spurn what they see as low-ball offers, while buyers are demanding discounts because they are "convinced prices will drop further, and they don't want to feel like suckers six months later," says Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin Corp., a Seattle-based real-estate brokerage that operates in nine states. The result is that "it's high noon at the O.K. Corral on every single transaction." 
 
 Agents say that sluggish housing markets are requiring sellers to become much more realistic about setting prices that will spur dealsthe prices they set. 
 
 After receiving no offers on a three-bedroom home in Oceanside, Calif., during the first week on the market, real-estate agent Jim Klinge convinced the seller to slash $30,000 from the price, to $420,000. 
 
 That drew two full-price offers, and the home sold last week in an all-cash deal. "The drop in price was critical to reignite urgency for buyers," said Mr. Klinge. 
 
 Some sellers have opted to pull their homes from the market rather than lower their prices, either because they believe values will improve or because cutting the price would mean selling for less than the amount owed to the bank. 
 
 "I know so many people here who are unwilling landlords," said Mr. Kelman. "They're now spending their Friday nights fixing leaky faucets for the tenants they've brought into their house." 
 
 Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com ||||| Flint, Mich. isn’t only troubled by bad water. A new study shows it also has one of the nation's most depressed housing markets. 
 
 An estimated 11,605 homes in Flint are vacant, according RealtyTrac’s report on nationwide housing vacancies for the first quarter of 2016. That’s 7.5 percent of the city’s total housing market, a vacancy rate nearly five times higher than the national average of 1.6 percent. 
 
 Flint leads the list for the most housing vacancies ahead of Detroit (5.3 percent); Youngstown, Ohio (4.4 percent); Beaumont, Texas (3.8 percent); and Atlantic City, N.J. (3.7 percent). 
 
 The data shows that the number of vacancies rises closest to Flint’s city center, where one in five houses are empty. THe problem extends to rental properties, 23 percent of which are standing vacant, compared to the national rate of 4.3 percent. 
 
 "It's a downward spiral as vacancy rates rise," RealtyTrac vice president Daren Blomquist told CNN. "A homeowner who is trying to sell their house might have to end up walking away, and that adds to the problem." 
 
 Vacancies were determined both from RealtyTrac’s own publicly recorded real estate data, which includes foreclosure and owner-occupancy status, and data from the US Postal Service that indicates whether or not a postal carrier has flagged a property as vacant. Metropolitan areas with at least 100,000 residential properties were included in the report. 
 
 Flint has had a difficult housing market for years. A 2000 Census brief on housing costs, released in 2003, noted that Flint had the lowest median housing value among large cities in the United States. 
 
 In 2015, things weren't much better. A 2WalletHub report done last year placed Flint dead last in an overall ranking of cities for the health of their real estate markets. WalletHub also ranked Flint as one of the cities with the highest number of homes with negative equity, and with the lowest median home-price appreciation. Its housing market ranked last compared to other cities of its size, such as Dayton, Ohio and Fall River, Mass. 
 
 While Flint’s housing market has had longstanding challenges, there is no denying that the water crisis is a recent contributing factor to its decline. In 2014, before the amount of lead in Flint’s water became a statewide nightmare, housing prices in Genesee County even appeared to be rising. 
 
 But that same year, Flint switched its water supply from Detroit to the Flint River, whose water supply was later found to be much more corrosive than the Detroit supply. 
 
 In August 2015, a group of Virginia Tech researchers investigated complaints by testing the water from homes in Flint. They determined that not only did water from the Flint River contain unsafe amounts of lead, but it would also cost the city millions of dollars to repair corroded and broken pipes. A public outcry followed the findings, and Flint residents later filed a lawsuit against the city of Flint and the state of Michigan, as well as other defendants. 
 
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 Home prices slid by 8 percent in Flint in December 2015, the largest drop in the nation. It’s projected that the ongoing water crisis will push prices even lower. 
 
 "I would suspect there is not a lot of demand in buying or renting in the city at this point," Mr. Blomquist told CNN.
– The latest census figures on the housing market make for grim reading for homeowners. Some 18.4 million homes are vacant—11% of the nation's housing supply—and home ownership rates are dropping rapidly, CNBC reports. Prices are down year-over-year in all 28 major metropolitan areas tracked by the Wall Street Journal, and conditions look set to get even worse. Real estate agents expect many more foreclosed homes to hit the market this year, sending prices down further. Buyers are demanding discounts because they are "convinced prices will drop further, and they don't want to feel like suckers six months later," says the chief executive of Redfin Corp., a real-estate brokerage that operates in nine states. The result, he says, is that "it's high noon at the OK Corral on every single transaction."