PrintThere’s little to smile about in Zillow’s latest report on home values: US home values fell 12.1 percent year-over-year, marking the 10th consecutive quarter of declines; Total home sales fell 23.7 percent in June versus a year earlier; and more than one-fifth (23 percent) of all owners of single family homes with mortgages owe more on a mortgage than their home is currently worth.
The only good news to be gleaned from the report were declining rates of price depreciation and the suggestion that some markets may-or may not-be close to their bottoms.
Pulled from the mega site’s extraordinary home valuation database, the data used for Zillow’s calculations is not as reliable as actual sales data from courthouses, but it’s more current.
Foreclosure re-sales made up more than one-fifth (22 percent) of all home sales nationally in June, and 29.2 percent of all homes sold in June were sold for less than what the owner originally paid.
Zillow also surveyed homeowners in early June and found that 29 percent of homeowners say they would be at least somewhat likely to put their home on the market if they see signs of a turnaround, signaling an abundance of potential inventory waiting in the wings.
At the regional and local levels, the outlook varies. Eighteen of 142 declining MSAs have posted at least three consecutive quarters of smaller year-over-year home value declines, signaling a true trend. Nine of those markets are in California, where housing markets have been hard-hit by foreclosures and declining values.
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