If you are one of the few home owners that have lost value in their homes, there are some tips and ideas that can help you to take the sting out of falling property values. The following are some ideas that were presented in Forbes for homeowners to use to try to make the decrease in home values less depressing:

 1.  One of the things you can do is look at your property assessment that your property taxes are based on.   If your home has lost value, have it reappraised by the municipal assessor. Also, consider petitioning to get back taxes overpaid in the last few months.  If petitioning doesn't work, you may want to consider suing; this will depend on what amount of moeny you are looking to get back.

2.  Do you have a home office that you haven't been taking as a deduction?  Well, if your home has lost value, the issue of having to deduct depreciation becomes a moot point. 

3.  Another option that I read about was a Sale-leaseback with a trusted relative or friend.  If you're convinced your property is due for a big price correction and you have equity in the home, then sell now. As an example, if you have a $500,000 home that has been appraised at $580,000, you can sell it and take home $50,000 of the $80,000 gain tax free (due to an exemption on profits from the sale of personal residences). You can sell the property to a trusted relative or friend, and then become a tenant and pay that friend or relative rent at market rates, which is a much more attractive amount than Treasury bonds are paying.  When the housing market corrects, you can then buy the property back.

4.  This last option is one that I am not that familiar with, but I will present it anyway.  And that is to invest in housing futures. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange sells investment instruments that trade based on house price indexes for each of the 10 largest U.S. cities. You can trade these as you would any other commodity; sell futures, buy puts, or sell calls on this market to hedge losses in the value of your home.

Before moving on any of the above options, be sure to consult your personal financial advisor.  I don't profess to being able to fully explain the use of any of the above options, although on the surface they do make some amount of sense.  Have your financial advisor give you detailed explanations as to how any of the above ideas would be to your advantage.

In today's very tight housing market, homeowners need to be able to view their personal financial situation from different perspectives and look at using different options to maximize their returns.