Home prices are likely to fall nationwide next year for the first time since the Great Depression, a private research company predicted Wednesday, but Central Florida has probably escaped with only a slight decline, if any.

Moody’s Economy.com, after analyzing data from 379 U.S. metropolitan areas, concluded that 133 of them will experience slumps in their existing-home prices this year or during the next one to four years.

Of those, more than 20 metro areas, including several in Florida, will see a “crash” in their median price of 10 percent or more, the company projected.

Leading the way are Danville, Ill., where prices have fallen 18.7 percent since mid-2005; and Fort Myers, where the median price is expected to fall 18.6 percent by mid-2007.

Because the slumping metro areas constitute nearly half of the nation’s housing stock, the report said, the nationwide, median price of an existing home is expected to fall next year by 3.6 percent, the first annual decline since the 1930s.

The outlook in Central Florida is more promising. The report concluded that Metro Orlando has already experienced its price slump: a 3 percent decline in the first and second quarters of this year. And prices in the Volusia, Brevard and Polk metro areas aren’t expected to slip at all.

Still, Orlando’s existing-home market faces three problems: affordability, speculation and overbuilding, said Mark Zandi, Moody’s Economy.com chief economist and the report’s main author.

“A lot of things are coming together now to conspire to ensure that, after a great run, Orlando’s housing market is going to experience a correction,” Zandi said.

That correction, having started with the drop in median price earlier this year, will continue in the form of flat prices for the next three years, he predicted.

“Homeowners have enjoyed an amazing run,” he said. “If you bought your home four years ago, you doubled your money. If it simply stays flat for three years, you still have a good return at the end of the day.”

Sales down; inventory up

According to monthly sales data collected by the Orlando Regional Realtor Association, the Orlando area’s existing-home market peaked last summer; since then, sales have cooled and the median price has wavered between $239,000 and $253,000 for more than a year.

The inventory of properties for sale, meanwhile, has ballooned from less than a two-month supply to more than 10 months’.

“Buyers are out there, and they’re looking at a lot of inventory,” said Barry Carnes, broker-owner of Century 21 A.A. Carnes, a real-estate office in Longwood. “You’re seeing a couple of [price] adjustments, at least, before some [homes] are selling.”

Double-digit-percentage drops in price would be quite a switch from the way housing has performed across the country in recent years. Extra-low mortgage rates and other factors pushed sales nationally to five consecutive annual records, and prices in the hottest markets skyrocketed.

Recession possible?

But sales have cooled significantly in the past year, and some experts worry that a severe slowdown could drag the country into recession, much as the stock market did in 2000 when the high-tech bubble burst.

Zandi’s report, however, predicts that, “while the broader economy is expected to bend under the weight of the listing housing market, it is not expected to break.” For the moment, today’s market is still a far cry from the situation in the late 1980s and early ’90s, when sellers sometimes had to bring money to the table to unload properties during a recession, said Gary Balanoff, broker-owner of Re/Max Select in Oviedo.

These days, homeowners who have been in their house for a while “are still able to make a good profit, and that’s really a good indicator,” Balanoff said.

“If you’re an investor, you’re probably not going to get great returns,” said Stanley Smith, a professor of finance at the University of Central Florida. “If you’re looking to buy a home, you’re probably not going to lose much — and you may gain some.”