Home Values

WITH HOME VALUES continuing to plummet across the country, it's become clear that the real estate meltdown is far from over.

Values for single-family homes in 14 major U.S. cities posted double-digit declines from their respective peaks, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which tracks prices of single-family homes. On a national level, home values are down 12% since December 2006. And according to Beth Ann Bovino, a senior economist at Standard & Poor's, they could drop another 10% by the end of the year.

"Things are accelerating downwards [and] in most cases the fall gets steeper and steeper every month," says David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor's.

The biggest culprit for this downturn: rampant speculation on property values during the past several years. "The areas that have seen a huge amount of speculation...are the ones that got nailed," says Blitzer. "The farther up prices went the farther down they've come." This was especially true in the Sun Belt region. Cities like Las Vegas, Miami and Phoenix, which are popular for either their beaches or deserts, lured investors looking for rental properties that would appreciate in value so they could later sell them to baby boomer retirees for a sizable profit, explains Danielle Babb, a real estate analyst and professor of economics and statistics Northcentral University in Arizona.

Foreclosures have also contributed to the decline in home values. During the first quarter, foreclosures were up 112% from the same period in 2007, according to RealtyTrac, which lists foreclosed properties. As a result, there's now a glut of homes for sale on the market and a lot of very nervous mortgage lenders reluctant to give out loans.