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Housing values plunge nearly $13 billion

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BY SHANNON BEHNKEN

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE

Published: February 6, 2009

We all know Suncoast home prices have tumbled, but this hurts: The area lost $35.6 billion in home value in 2008, according a report released this morning from Seattle-based Zillow.com.

In the fourth quarter alone, the report says, values fell by $12.6 billion.

And this, perhaps, is the worst news of all: 25.9 percent of us have negative equity, meaning we owe more on our mortgages than our homes are worth.

The median home price, according to Zillow, was $145,778 in 2008, a nearly 19 percent drop. The median is the point at which half the houses sold for less and half for more.

The Suncoast, with a skyrocketing foreclosure rate, fared worse than the nation. Nearly every area of the country, however, was hit hard by falling prices in 2008, says Zillow, which lists values and sales information on millions of U.S. homes on its Web site.

"A witch's brew of economic insecurity, foreclosures and tightened lending standards are helping to keep hard-hit markets down and to widen the scope of markets showing declines in home values," said Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics.
House values in the U.S. fell for the eighth consecutive quarter, dropping 11.6 percent to median of $192,119.That includes 161 metro areas.

As a whole, U.S. homeowners lost $3.3 trillion in home values during the year. The majority of the loss occurred in the fourth quarter.
Housing sales nationally and on the Suncoast are picking up. The national and local associations of Realtors reported an uptick of home sales last month. Zillow's report suggests buyers are snatching up distressed properties.

One in five, or 20 percent, of the nation's transactions in 2008 were properties in foreclosure. Another 10.9 percent of all sales were short sales, which means the lender allowed the house to sell for less than was owed on the mortgage.

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