Metro home prices in decline

Twin Cities home values decline at record pace

Excerpt:

Zillow.com’s latest report on the housing market suggests that home prices are still falling. A lot. During the last quarter of 2010 home values in the Twin Cities metro area fell 12.1 percent, or $22,800 compared with the previous year — the highest quarterly decline on record since Zillow starting keeping stats in 1996. Quarter-to-quarter values were down 5.8 percent. Nationally the annual decline averaged only 5.9 percent and fell 2.6 percent between the third and fourth quarters.
Zillow’s home value index in the Twin Cities during that period was $166,300, down 32.6 percent or $80,500 from the July 2006 peak.

The data is different from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtor’s sales report that I write about every month. This one tracks the value of all homes, not just those that have sold. It also shows that 42.3 percent of all single-family homes in the Twin Cities with a mortgage were underwater, up slightly from the third quarter and way above the national average of 27 percent. Okay, and there’s one more piece of bad news: 36.1 percent of all home that sold during December sold for a loss — another slight increase from the previous quarter

Comment: Chart is from Zillow for my home. Underwater numbers are vastly different than reported by USAToday yesterday (blogged here). USA today was just for Hennepin CO. "Twin Cities" would include outlying counties.