More price cooling in the sunbelt

LOOK OUT BELOW: Two years from now, house prices are almost certain to be lower in Florida, California, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Tell me something I didn't know!

Not exactly the most surprising news, but now we have numbers to support this forecast. The PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. has released its quarterly U.S. Market Risk Index, which gives the odds of price declines in the nation's 50 biggest metro areas. And the news is sobering if you plan to sell a house in Florida or California in the next two years.

According to PMI's risk index, there's a 99.5 percent chance that houses will lose value over the next two years in the Fort Lauderdale metro area in Florida and in the Riverside-San Bernardino metro in California. Other metro areas where the odds are 99 percent or greater: Orlando, Miami and Tampa-St. Pete, Fla.

Florida is the leader in sunshine and in burst bubbles. I can hear someone composing a blues tune about it now. I affectionatly refer to Florida as "God's Waiting Room".

Here in Southern California we have a 95.9 percent chance, or greater, of seeing price declines. In Vegas, the odds are 98.5 percent; in Phoenix, 96.3 percent. Sacramento and the Bay Area and Silicon Valley all are in the riskiest rank.

The metro areas with the least risk of a price decline over the next two years? My place of birth Dallas, TX. That is followed by Houston; San Antonio; Pittsburgh; Memphis, Tenn.; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Mo./Kan.; Austin, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Denver; Cincinnati; Charlotte, N.C. -- they all have a less than 1 percent chance of house prices being lower two years from now, according to PMI's risk index.

RATES: Today is Wednesday, when Bankrate conducts its weekly rate survey. Last week, the 30-year fixed averaged 6.32 percent. It's hard to predict what the average will be today, because rates have been volatile lately. Safe to say that the average rate will be higher this week than last week.

Predicting the size of the increase is difficult, because bond yields have been swinging wildly -- rising a quarter of a percentage point one day and plunging nearly the same amount the next day. This is happening because of political turmoil. The mortgage industry is like a 6-year-old at Christmastime, the Senate is like a mom who promises lots of presents, and the House is like a dad who's threatening to give the kid a lump of coal. The poor kid is jubilant one day, despondent the next. Your mortgage industry in microcosm.