I recently participated in a real estate and mortgage financing survey for Morgan Stanley. They polled nearly 1,000 practicing real estate agents for an early read on the Spring selling season, in advance of the National Association of Realtors pending home sales index, which will be released later this spring.

As a participant, I received a copy of the survey and I found this interesting:

”Looking ahead, Realtors appear more optimistic than other prognosticators: they expect home prices to decline by only 5% in 2008. Housing economists, such as Moody’s economy.com, project a 12% decline in home prices. Home price derivatives also discount a 12% decline. It may be that Realtors are by nature optimistic people, or perhaps Wall Street is too pessimistic. We will know who is right soon enough.”