This year will finally be the end of five years of U.S. home price declines, according to a recent poll from Reuters.

The panel of 23 economists and analysts believe the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index during 2012 will not change from it current position. While homeowners certainly would rather hear predictions of price gains, a bottoming-out is better than another year of price drops. This latest forecast is more upbeat than November’s when economists though that prices would fall 0.3 percent this year.

“I think we are seeing stabilization, but unfortunately it’s stability at the bottom,” said Lindsey Piegza, economist at FTN Financial, as quoted in the Reuters article.

As of October, home prices had fallen roughly a third from their housing boom peaks. The average U.S. home price is now back to levels from nine years ago.

A flood of foreclosures over the past five years has put continual downward pressure on prices, and unfortunately the market has not yet worked off its inventory. This year foreclosures will likely start to ease, according to 15 of the 20 analysts who responded on the issue. The other five said the inventory will not diminish much until 2013.

Positive movement is likely to come in 2013, according to the poll respondents, when they say price will rise 1.5 percent.

As recovery in the housing market is widely believed to be essential to improvement in the greater economy, many of the survey respondents felt the government will probably ramp up efforts to bolster sales and refinances.

One possible measure would be to use government-run mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make refinances easier for underwater borrowers, as well as provide cheaper loans to more homeowners.

“I think what we’re likely to see is further eligibility for refinancing on the government balance sheets, so essentially more and more homeowners being able to take advantage of refinancing programs (and) loan modifications,” said Piegza.