This won't be new news to any of you listing agents working with frustrated sellers, but most homeowners haven't adjusted their expectations of value yet. Everyone realizes that house values have declined; but no one wants to believe that their home has declined in value. Here's the data from ZillowBlog to prove just how delusional homeowners are when they ask themselves "what is my house worth?":
- 62% of U.S. Homeowners believe their home’s value has increased or stayed the same in the past year. In reality, 77% of U.S. homes have declined in value over the past 12 months.
- While only 38% of homeowners think their home has declined in value, about 77% of homes actually have declined in the last year
- People living in the West seem to be a little more realistic, with 44% believing their home’s value has increased (28%) or stayed the same (16%); however more homes in the West have lost value, with 88% of Western homes declining over the past year.
Here's today's front page of the San Francisco Chronicle business section:
If you’d like to learn more about what’s happening to real estate prices in your area, next week we’ll release our Q2 Real Estate Market Reports, which chart home value changes for 165 metropolitan statistical areas, the largest report of its kind. New this quarter, we’ll also look at % of homes sold for a loss, and % of home sales that were foreclosures.
You can tune in to our Q2 Market Reports Conference Call on August 12 at 11am PT, to hear Dr. Stan Humphries discuss these reports as well as some more findings from today’s survey. To sign up for the Web version of this call, visit here. Or, you can dial in directly at 1-800-240-2430.
;)
Links;)
Archives
Posted by 
When someone sells their home the neighbors all encourage them to sell for more. (conflict of interest) I had a client tell me that all of his neighbors believed his home was worth over $1 Million. Unfortunately they did not have the most valuable home in a a neighborhood that the highest closing in history was about $800,000.