U.S. homeowners saw the value of their homes drop by a record $1.4 trillion during the last three months of the year, according to Zillow.com, a real estate data service.
The company said the quarter capped a 12-month period in which homewoners saw the value of their property drop by a total $3.3 trillion.
The bad news just keeps coming:
About one of every six homeowners is underwater, owing more on their mortgage than their home is worth, Zillow found.
About a third of all homes sold in 2008 were sold for a loss.
About 20 percent of all real estate transactions last year were foreclosures.
"The fourth quarter was another absolutely dismal quarter in terms of real estate market performance," Stan Humphries, Zillow's vice president for data and analytics wrote on the company's blog.
"Nationally, the Zillow Home Value Index was down 11.6 percent on a year-over-year basis to a value of $192,119. This marks the eight consecutive quarter of year-over-year depreciation."
Zillow does home pricing indexes on 161 metropolitan areas and computes a national average. The service found that the median estimated U.S. home price dropped 11.6 percent in 2008, to $192,119.
Zillow gathers its data from multiple listing services, county records and user submissions. It does not include cities in Kansas or the Kansas City area because of reporting restrictions.
House prices in St. Louis, however, have dropped less than the national average, at 3.7 percent, to $140,000. Des Moines was one of the few metro area in the U.S. where house prices rose in 2008 - up .1 percent to $143,000. Houses in Lincoln are down .5 percent, to $135,000, Zillow said.
Unless you're selling now, the expected price you could get for a house today is of little consequence. It still has plenty of value because you are living in it.