What's a $600k House Worth Today? $383,130

Today, Standard & Poors released the October 2008 numbers for their Case-Shiller housing index. The data showed housing prices continue to decline, dropping 18% in the last year.

If we look at the San Francisco index, we see a peak of 218.37 was reached in May, 2006. Today, the index stands at 139.44. While this definitely shows a significant drop, the numbers are a bit hard to conceptualize.

As such, I decided to take the data and transform it into numbers more easily understandable. Specifically, if you're house in the Bay Area was worth $600,000 at the peak of the real estate market, what is it worth today?

Here is a graph of the results:



As you can see the answer is $383,130. I highlighted another few points on the chart just to show how dramitic the increase in real estate prices have been.

Also, housing declines are not that uncommon. A house worth $200,000 at the beginning of 1990 was only worth $189,000 when the real estate bubble began in 1997.

Additionally, this same house has lost $216,870 in value from the peak! Amazingly, more than the entire house was worth in 1997.