At a cursory glance it seems to just show that, with the exception of Detroit, the cities that saw the biggest boom also saw the biggest bust. We knew that. But if you look closer, you can see that while losses abound across the board, most cities are still ahead of where they were in 2000, despite the epic crash.
For example, Boston saw about an 82 percent jump in home values from 2000 to its peak in 2005, and saw only a 15% drop from the peak through October of 2009. Chicago saw about a 65 percent jump to its most recent peak and only a 22 percent drop. Even Miami, with its 48 percent price drop from peak didn't wipe out the 170 percent gains it made in the first half of the decade.
Overall, over this historic decade in housing, the top twenty markets gained more than they lost in value.
Of course the argument then is, well what about all those people who bought right around the peak?
Yes, of course, they're the ones in trouble. According to the National Association of Realtors, in 2005 and 2006 together (peak years), 13.4 million existing homes were purchased. According to the Commerce Department, 2.2 million newly constructed homes were bought in those two years as well, bringing the total to a little over 15.5 million. Granted existing home data is single family and condos, so it's not exactly apples to apples with Case Shiller, which only counts single family homes in its data, and the commerce department is all single family and not included in Case Shiller, but you get the basic idea.
