U.S. home values fall 11% in 2008

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The total value of residential property in the United States was $19.1 trillion in December, down $2.4 trillion from the same 2007 month, according to the latest data from First American CoreLogic.
The value of U.S. homes at year’s end was down 11.2 percent compared with their $21.5 trillion total value in December 2007, the California-based tracker of home values and selling prices found.
“During 2008 homeowners lost a total of $2.4 trillion of their housing wealth, which will continue to put significant stress on consumer balance sheets, particularly as job losses continue to grow,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Mark Fleming said in a statement. “The geographic breadth of price declines rapidly expanded in the second half of 2008, which means that housing wealth losses are broadening across much of the country.”
As of December, the housing stocks in more than 700 metropolitan regions – more than three quarters of all metro regions nationwide – were losing value, CoreLogic reported. In June 2008, 394 metro regions had been losing value.
First American CoreLogic – a member of The First American Corp. group of companies – is a national provider of real estate, property and ownership data. It collects data from 7,569 ZIP codes in the 50 states and District of Columbia. For more information, visit www.CoreLogic.com.