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Home prices continue to slide

Zillow released our Q1 Home Value Report today -- a comprehensive look at what's happening to house prices nationwide. And it's grim. Here are some highlights (or lowlights):

- nationwide, home prices declined 8% year-over-year, the 5th quarter in a row of declining prices and the largest decline in the 12 years for which Zillow has data

- 5 of the top 10 declines were in California

- 130 of the 160 cities we studied declined; 29 of the 30 largest cities declined (Dallas was the holdout)

- 45% of homeowners who bought their home in 2007 are already underwater on their loan, and 52% of people who bought in 2006 are underwater.

Here is more data than you can shake a for sale sign at:

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Posted by Spencer Rascoff on 05/06/2008 11:22 AM

Comments (37)

housing trends, housing bubble, downturn, home value reports, zillow

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37 Comments on Home prices continue to slide

MAY

2008

Great information. Thank you for posting this. It doesn't paint a very pretty picture but I can say that we have seen a drastic increase in activity here in SW Florida.

Wow! Those Riverside graphs are incredible. It looks like the Zindex is the inverse of the equity line, meaning that if prices had remained stable rather than skyrocketing, equity would have remained stable rather than plummeting below zero. This essentially defines the bubble mentality as few folks stopped to ask how people with roughly the same income could suddenly afford to pay twice as much to buy a house.

Thanks!

Thanks for the link to more data that I can shake a for sale sign at. It included an MSA I was surprised and pleased to see listed (as it's so small)...Vero Beach.

I like your new zillow wallpaper Spencer

Thanks for being the grim reaper, Spence. Double digits for California, The bigger they are the harder they fall?

Wow, great post. Lots of info and I love the charts!

-Tre

Great information, even a little bit of overload.

John Thomas - Certified Mortgage Planner

Very nice, Good thing I live near Dallas :) We are doing well down here at the moment...but you never know!

Hi, it's David G from Zillow,

FYI - you can easily add the spreadsheet to your own blog. Click on the arrow in the top left corner to copy the embed code - just like you would with a YouTube video.

There's a conference call to discuss these findings w/ Dr Stan Humphries, our head of analytics, in 20 minutes (@ 11am PT on 5/6/08).

The dial-in # is: 800-218-0713

If you're a data wonk, it's worth dialing in. More info here.

This call is more geared towards the media, but there will be industry-watchers (like you) on the call also. We'll be doing a second call in a few weeks more specifically geared towards the real estate industry -- I'll let you know about that in a future post.

While prices are down, I am seeing things stablize in parts of So. New Hampshire. Things are selling in 60-120 days -- not bad. We will have to stay tuned to see how this plays out, but I am cautiously optimistic that we may have seen the worst in terms of prices continue to slide downward.

Holy cow...this is amazing

What a horrible graph. It presupposes that everyone is in the crapper as the yellow ares are 0% or more. Come on guys, get reat! Every market is different and real estate is local. I'm so tired of the media and others painting with such a broad brush, so much so that you're keeping buyers in Appreciating markets like ours on the sidelines thinking its as bad here as it is in Michigan.

Boy the northeast corridor is not doing bad!

@Jonathan -- No question that all real estate is local. That's why we've studied 160 cities across the nation and have prepared a separate analysis for each. You can see each report here. Here is the analysis for your market (Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord is the Metropolitan Statistical Area. And here it is in excel.

This is some great information!! I have a special request, can you analyze how much negative equity is in all houses in an MSA for all time instead of just given dates? I am just curious how that would look.

This is terrible. I didn't want to finish reading...

The information you have given is very useful. Thanks.

Lets see...fewer people qualify for loans under "sound principles," the GSE's are limiting LTV's in declining markets (gas to the devaluation inferno), people are walking away from homes, yes...I would pretty much say that were not quite at the "bottom" yet. This is a line from Prudent Bear that illustrates how our economic resiliency is based on delusion:

Weak data - Fed eases, stocks rally.
Strong data - Strong economy, stocks rally.
Consensus data - Lower volatility, stocks rally.
Bank loses US$ 8 billion -Bad news all out of the way, stocks rally.
Oil price up - Good for energy producers, stocks rally.
Oil price down - Good for consumers, stocks rally.
US$ down - Good for exporters, stocks rally.
US$ up - Lower inflation, stocks rally.
Inflation up Good for commodities and asset prices, stocks rally.
Inflation down - Fed eases, stocks rally.
Climate change Soft commodities up, stocks rally.
World ends - Good for disaster recovery companies, stocks rally. (from prudent bear)

I keep posting this next graph because it illustrates the reality of the 2nd wave of destruction coming in 2009-2010 that is going to be more devastating than the subprime explosion...sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but we have a long way to go before we are out of this mess when the option arm and ALT-A resets occur on homes with zero or negative equity, "walk away" doesn't come close to describing what is going to happen...it is going to be "give away."

Great! Another tool to show my wife why it looks like I am on vacation. :)

Thanks For the info.

Make it a great day!

LOL...that's funny Chris.That's the perfect way to look at it. You are on a vacation! Very interesting information. It looks good here....yay!

Really good infromation. Thanks for the facts and taking the time to present them.

Spencer,

That is pretty descriptive of where we are. Notable is that the serious price declines are only evident in certain areas like Southern Nevada, lots of California and Florida. The message is it's local. Good stuff.

This is quite interesting information. Thanks for the post.

Thanks for posting all the data! I like one stop shopping for info.

MAY

2008

Spencer - As always great post of USEFUL information. Zillow is a tool that all REALTORS need to embrace.

Terrific reference tool, Spence. Starting to see the dark shades hit metro Chicago, so I guess I'll be staying in my house for a little while longer. Great job, Spence...

Stark info, Spencer. Correction seems to be seven years away.

This post seems to have the (correct) message that real estate is local, which is in sharp contrast to your recent "napkin" post, wherein you made a sweeping generalization about what to expect for your home based on whether you were in the city or in the suburbs and what price range your house was in:

Circles and Smileys and Frownies: explaining housing prices

Looking at the maps you provided here, I was happy to see that Austin was among the areas that are holding value. Unfortunately, this post sort of falls in line with the media gloom-and-doom stuff that we have been hearing for awhile now, especially with the headline you chose.

I hate to say this because it will sound like I want to debate (which I really don't), but this is the type of post that makes my job more difficult. I have clients who hear about the "national" real estate market, which doesn't even exist, and they make their decisions accordingly. If they hear that average prices are falling, they hold off rather than purchasing, so I have to go against the media and show them that prices are actually on the way up in the area they are considering.

I suggest everyone read this article. It puts a different spin on things.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121003604494869449.html

You can't generalize. All of the statistics I am seeing for "San Francisco" do not reflect the reality of this market. For desireable properties in desireable locations, the values have gone up since September of last year. I am pretty sure that Case-Shiller, Zillow, etc.. lump in crappy locations like Antioch, Richmond and other areas that are definitely not SF into their statistics. Someone needs to do a real detailed analysis. The inaccuracy of the statistics I am seeing for my area is pretty bad and is causing people to panic.

@ "The Statistics are Bullshit":

Re specific Bay Area stats... Here are the graphics and here are the excel files. As you can see, we go into excruciating detail on each micro-area of the Bay Area. But yes, we do roll it up into an MSA for reporting purposes, and yes that can lead to distortions because it lumps in different areas together.

Here is what the Bay Area maps look like:

I like the graphs and such, but I wouldn't take all of the numbers at face value. I've found zillow to be a good starting point for some general information, but I've also discovered some major discrepancies. But thanks a ton for posting!

MAY

2008

This is a great reference. Can it be included in other emails or blogs? can I show and link it. I am intentional about advising and preparing my clients. For long term success. Thanks again!!

Hey Erik-

It's Drew from Zillow. Yes -- you are certainly welcome, and encouraged, to include this data in your own blogs and e-mails. If you'd like to embed the spreadsheet Spencer included in this post, you can click the down arrow in the upper left and you'll be given the option to grab the embed code.

Further, I wrote up a "how-to" article explaining how to use edit grid to build your own embeddable spreadsheet over at the Geek Estate Blog.

Hope this helps.

MAY

2008

Do the numbers look accurate in your area? I practice neaar Chicago and the homes that are closing are down more than 8% from their peaks. At least that it what it looks like in my small corner/