U.S. Property Owners Lost $3.3 Trillion in Home Value Last Year

[marmar]

U.S. Property Owners Lost $3.3 Trillion in Home Value Last Year
By Dan Levy


Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. housing market lost $3.3 trillion in value last year and almost one in six owners with mortgages owed more than their homes were worth as the economy went into recession, Zillow.com said.

The median estimated home price declined 11.6 percent in 2008 to $192,119 and homeowners lost $1.4 trillion in value in the fourth quarter alone, the Seattle-based real estate data service said in a report today.

“It’s like a runaway train gaining momentum,” Stan Humphries, Zillow’s vice president of data and analytics, said in an interview. “It’s difficult to say when we’ll see a bottom to the housing market.”

The U.S. economy shrank the most in the fourth quarter since 1982, contracting at a 3.8 percent annual pace, the Commerce Department said on Jan. 30. Record foreclosures have pushed down prices as unemployment rose. More than 2.3 million properties got a default or auction notice or were seized by lenders last year, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of data on defaults. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aE29HSrxA4rI&refer=home

[ixion]

1. so...just crunching some numbers...

3.3T in housing losses +
~5T in stock market

Is just over 8T in losses. And what did we spend?

Just off the top:

Bailout Wall St.: 2T+
~1T+ in Iraq

So, just spit ball, off the top of my head numbers puts us down about 11T or more (much more, actually)

Great. That's just f'n great.

2008 will go down in history as the year we f*k'd ourselves, and lubed up the path for the second Great Depression.

[depakid]

2. If the stated value was illusory- then no one lost any money

The capital resourse itself hasn't changed, unless the owner has engaged in waste (failed to maintain or improve).

[NashVegas]

3. On Paper

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

4. We'll see the bottom when the median price is a good match for the median income

It isn't rocket science, it really isn't. If people want house prices to stabilize, then wages need to go up. If we continue to lose jobs and have artificially repressed wages like we do, then prices will continue to drop.

They'll continue to drop also because of overbuilding in certain sectors and because the bloom is off the rose of real estate "investing".