Home Value drop

Nationally, if you’ve purchased your home in the past five years, there’s a one-in-three chance that you’re “underwater” on your mortgage.

That’s the study of U.S. home values conducted by Seattle’s Zillow.com, which indicated that the median U.S. home value has plummeted to a level not seen since the fourth quarter of 2004.

In the U.S., 29.1 percent of homeowners who purchased a home since 2003 owe more money on their home than what it’s worth, which is called being “underwater” on the mortgage. Some U.S. real estate markets are faring much worse. In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue market, it’s not as bleak. According to Zillow research, home values have appreciated 8 percent since 2003, although in the past year, home values fell 7.3 percent to a current home value of $355,945. According to Zillow, of the homeowners who bought in 2003, only 0.3 percent have negative home equity. But those who bought in 2007 aren’t faring so well, Zillow reports, with 27.9 percent of those buyers with negative home equity.