3.3 Trillion Dollars In Property Values Lost In 2008

You wonder why real estate professionals are starting to have hairlines like mine instead of the perfect head of hair on their business cards a couple of years ago, it is reports like these coming out of Zillow confirming the losses Americans have taken on their home’s value.

We are looking at approximately 3.3 trillion dollars of lost property value in the United States in 2008. That in numbers is $3,300,000,000,000 to blow your mind. Or to put it into terms we can understand:

• It could buy over 10 million Mercedes C300 Sedans
• It is 25 percent of the GDP of the United States in 2007
• It is greater than the Gross Domestic Product of all but the European Union, United States, and Japan in 2007. (ref)

When a country had to absorb the loss of wealth in one sector of the economy in such a short time there is bound to be pain. Add in the stock markets meltdown and it is truly amazing that the country is as strong as it is now.

The declines mean that U.S. homeowners lost a cumulative $3.3 trillion in home values during 2008, with much of that loss coming in the fourth quarter. Homeowners lost $1.4 trillion during the fourth quarter alone; more than the $1.3 trillion lost during all of 2007. Since the housing market’s peak in 2006, $6.1 trillion in home values have been lost.

Foreclosures made up nearly one in five (19.9 percent) of all transactions in 2008. The hard-hit Central Valley in California continued to lead the nation in foreclosures, as more than half of all sales in the Madera, Merced and Stockton metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) were foreclosures. The New York City metro area and the Grand Junction, Colo., had the lowest rates of foreclosure in the country (both at 3.9 percent). via Zillow.com.