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Real estate values down big-time during 2008

Just how much can we expect national real estate values to deflate during 2008, once the year comes to an end in the next couple of weeks? One national real estate organization that tracks such things believes the loss will amount to more than $2 trillion — that’s “trillion,” with a “T.”
Zillow is an organization that follows and keeps track of real estate values in the different regions of the country. It says that real estate values in the U.S. declined $1.9 trillion in the first three quarters of the year.
What does that mean? Zillow says it means that 11.7 million households now owe more on their home mortgages than their homes are actually worth. One in seven of all homeowners were upside-down on their mortgages at the end of the third quarter.
That means negative equity, falling values and increasing numbers of forclosures.
Is there any good news in all this? Well, some. First time homeowners are looking at property and buying, and rates continue to be good. Locally, home sales seem to have leveled off. But with so much bad news in so many sectors of the economy, it’s still a time for caution.

Tags: Add new tag, home values, mortgages

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Market Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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