Zillow.com, the online real estate marketplace, reported this week that home values fell 11.6 percent in 2008. This adds up to a painful $1.4 Trillion loss.

Adding to this number, foreclosures made up 19.9 percent of all transactions last year. This was especially prevalent in hard hit areas, such as California.

"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 Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics. “As more markets turn down and markets that were already down go deeper, the pace at which value is being erased from the U.S. housing stock is rapidly increasing, with more value wiped out in the fourth quarter of 2008 than was eliminated in all of 2007. The fourth quarter is the first in which we were able to see the effects of the mounting economic insecurity that picked up steam in the fall of last year. People without jobs, or fearing job loss, typically don’t buy homes, no matter how low prices or mortgage rates might be. Public policy, in terms of both job creation and efforts to stem the tide of foreclosures, will have a large influence on when some of these markets find bottom."

Published: February 5, 2009

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