2008: Homeowners Lose $2 Trillion in Value
December 15th, 2008 at 11:01 pm - by admin
Zillow.com, a Seattle-based real estate indexing website founded in 2005, published a study Monday saying that home values had fallen 9.7% this year and 12.6% since 2006.
Zillow also says that 33% of homes sold in the past 12 months went at a loss to their owners, and that nearly 15%, 11.7 million, of all American homeowners have negative equity in their homes.
The hardest hit areas are the popular tourist and retirement home destinations, California and Florida. A small sample of areas such as New York and the Carolinas show marginal gains in home value, the rest of the markets all sport losses.
Stockton, California showed the largest losses at a well over 30% year-for-year fall. No state-wide gains of over 3.5% are seen, while losses range to almost 20%. All but 30 of Zillow’s 163 sampling areas show losses.
“This year marked the acceleration of the market correction, and is likely to end with the eighth consecutive quarter of declines in home values. Homeowners in most areas we cover are struggling with foreclosures pouring into the market, large amounts of negative equity and dropping home values,” said Stan Humphries of Zillow.com.
Analysts believe that hardening economic times may result in even further falls in home values. There’s little solidity in predictions of where the metaphoric “bottom” lands.


