Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Negative Homeowner Equity at New High
By Theresa McCabe, The Street
05/09/11 – 12:09 PM EDT
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Home prices in the United States dropped 3% in the first quarter of 2011, the largest decrease since 2008 when the housing market experienced its worst performance, and negative homeowner equity hit a new high, according to Zillow’s Real Estate Market Report.
Median home values fell 8.2% year over year to $169,600 and are expected to fall as much as 9% this year as foreclosures spread and unemployment remains high, Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries said. The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9% in April, up from 8.8% in March, the Department of Labor reported earlier this month.
“With accelerating declines during the first quarter, it is unreasonable to expect home values to return to stability by the end of 2011,” Humphries said.
Home prices were down 29.5% from their peak in June 2006. Humphries predicts that prices won’t find a floor until 2012.
Negative equity reached a new high in the first quarter, with 28.4% of U.S. homeowners with mortgages underwater, meaning they owed more than their properties were worth. This was up from 27% in the fourth quarter of 2010.
I’ll point out that The Street is Jim Cramer’s own web site.
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and deeply dishonest–as are most of the rest of those a-holes.
One of the beautiful things about living in the United States of Amnesia is that nobody cares if you’re wrong or right–no one, even in this country of bean-counters and statisticians– no one I know of keeps track of the accuracy of pundits (let me know if there is a place I can find that data if it exists). I can find out any kind of data for sports figures and teams–and there are some remarkable bits of data out there that parses everything.
On the economic and political lever there is no penalty for being wrong, no penalty for batting .000 — in fact, there is a penalty for being right and that penalty is that you don’t go on the national stage. Everything is about propaganda and maintaining whatever narrative line is currently being favored by the oligarchy.