TAMPA — The Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) that makes up Tampa Bay, which includes Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties, lost an estimated $10.1 billion in value this year, according to Zillow, an information marketplace that provide information about homes, real estate listings and mortgages.
Still, that number was lower than the $16.1 billion that Bay area home values lost in 2010, officials said.
Zillow calculates total home value change by subtracting the estimated value of all homes in December 2011 from the total value at the start of 2011. Forecasting was used to calculate value change during December, officials said.
That pegged the total estimated value of Tampa Bay’s homes for 2011 at $159.3 billion. According to Zillow, total home values are calculated as the average of all Zestimate values multiplied by the total number of homes for a given day.
By comparison, the estimated loss in value for homes in the U.S. is more than $681 billion, which is 35 percent less than the $1.1 trillion lost in 2010, according to the figures in Zillow Real Estate Market Reports.
“The bulk of the total value lost during 2011 was in the first half of the year,” officials said. “From January to June, the U.S. housing market lost $454 billion. From July to December, Zillow projects residential home value losses will total a significantly lower $227 billion.”
Regionally, only nine out of 128 markets showed gains in home values during 2011. The New Orleans MSA showed the largest, with a gain of $3.5 billion. Pittsburgh’s MSA was second, gaining $2.7 billion in value.
“While homeowners suffered through another year of steep losses, the good news is that homes are losing value at a substantially slower pace as the market works its way towards the bottom,” said Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries. “Compared to last year when we saw sharp declines following the expiration of the homebuyer tax credits, this year we saw some organic improvement in home values, in terms of a slowed depreciation rate which resulted in a smaller total value loss for the year.”
Looking ahead to 2012, he is less encouraging. Here is what Humphries had to say: “Unfortunately, when we look ahead to next year, the unabsorbed pool of housing supply, dragging levels of consumer confidence, high unemployment and negative equity will continue to put downward pressure on the housing market, pushing our expectation for a potential recovery into late 2012 or early 2013.”
