Chartweek: Housing

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The decline in housing is illustrated above courtesy of Chart of the Day in these two charts:

Here is their comments below.  We'll follow this up with some statistics by Zillow via The Big Picture.

The US real estate market continues to struggle. For some perspective, today's top chart illustrates the US median price (adjusted for inflation) of a single-family home over the past 41 years while today's bottom chart presents the annual percent change in home prices (also adjusted for inflation). Today's chart illustrates that, prior to the financial crisis, the inflation-adjusted median home price rarely declined more than 5% in one year (gray shading). It is also very important to note that due to a large number of distressed properties, a high unemployment rate and stagnant wages, the inflation-adjusted median home price has declined 7.9% over the past year -- an annual decline larger than any that occurred during the 35 years prior to the financial crisis.

Link:  Chart of the Day:  Housing.