How predictable: Housing remains the biggest question mark looming over South Florida’s economic future.

As economists mapped out their forecasts for 2012, they generally see the year shaping up as another 12 months of slow recovery. Hiring should expand a little bit more than it did in 2011, consumers should continue opening their wallets, and tourism should remain a bright spot.

“For the first time in a few years, I feel some rays of optimism are hitting the landscape,’’ said Raul Valdes-Fauli, president of Professional Bank, a small community bank in Coral Gables. “For the last few years, I have been very down on things.”

But housing prices seem likely to remain depressed.

A forecast by Moody’s calls for a 12 percent drop in South Florida real estate values during 2012, as banks push a wave of foreclosed homes onto an already depressed market. Other industry watchers see the prediction as too grim, but it does capture a consensus that foreclosed homes will be an even bigger drag on the real estate recovery than they were in 2011.

“The only thing that’s really keeping a lid on our prices right now is the fear of the unknown. And that’s the fear of the number of foreclosures that might hit the market’’ said Ron Shuffield, head of the Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell network of 10 real estate brokerages throughout South Florida. “

Depressed real estate values are a major reason hiring and spending both remain restrained, and why 2012 is shaping up as a year for continued recovery but not a major rebound.

Forecasts call for modest growth in South Florida employment, building on the progress made during 2011. A forecast by the University of Central Florida predicts job growth will hit 1.6 percent in 2012, still a weak pace but better than the 1 percent gain seen in 2011.

That kind of modest progress would mean more job security for the employed, but only minor progress on the unemployment crisis.

The UCF forecast predicts South Florida’s unemployment rate will end 2012 at 10.5 percent, down just slightly from the 11 percent predicted for the end of 2011. (This is probably too pessimistic, since the latest reading of the region’s unemployment rate was 9.4 percent for November, down sharply from 10 percent in October.)

Slow progress on hiring — South Florida is on track to add about 21,000 jobs this year after losing more than 180,000 in the downturn — would set the pace for what forecasters expect to be a year of gradual improvement.

It’s a far better scenario than what seemed to be materializing over the summer, when fears of a second recession were rising. That could still happen: Analysts point to Europe’s teetering banking system as a potential disaster for the U.S. economy.

But predictions currently call for a better year, with 2012 serving as a springboard for full recovery in 2013 and 2014.

Florida’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research expects per-capita income to grow 1.5 percent statewide in 2012, thanks in part to a 3.4 percent gain in overall wages. Consumers remained resilient in 2011, and an autumn pickup in the University of Florida’s statewide confidence index is expected to continue into 2012.

“Consumers, both nationally and in Florida, sort of defy logic,’’ said Chris McCarty, head of UF’s survey bureau. “They are still doing some spending.”