Bank of America is Gambling that Housing Prices have hit bottom. In a new research report on Thursday, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch mortgage strategists and economists boosted their forecast for U.S. home prices this year. They now see prices squeezing out a 0.5 percent gain. That doesn't sound like much, but it is up quite a lot from the bank's older forecast of a 3.5 percent fall in prices this year.