US Housing Market Posts $2.3 Trillion Drop, Biggest Since 2008 (Florida Gains, California Loses)

The value of the US housing market shrunk by the most since the 2008 as the pandemic boom (and M2 Money growth) fizzled out.

After peaking at $47.7 trillion in June, the total value of US homes declined by $2.3 trillion, or 4.9%, in the second half of 2022, according to real estate brokerage Redfin. That’s the largest drop in percentage terms since the 2008 housing crisis, when home values slumped by 5.8% from June to December.

Homebuyers, already facing record-high prices, took an additional hit from mortgage rates that more than doubled last year. With less competition in the market, the median US home sale price was $383,249 last month, down from a peak of $433,133 in May. 

To be sure, home prices are not collapsing. In December, the total value of US houses was still 6.5% higher than it was a year earlier.

Florida Gains

How much homeowners lost depends on where they bought. The biggest declines were in pricey cities like San Francisco and New York, while buyers who moved to pandemic boomtowns are still seeing the returns on their investment, particularly in Florida.  

That was especially true in Miami, where the total value of homes ballooned 20% year-over-year to $468.5 billion in December, the largest annual percentage increase among the top metro areas. While the overall US housing market is down, Miami’s market has about the same value as when it peaked at $472 billion in July. Meanwhile, homeowners in North Port-Sarasota, Florida, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Charleston, South Carolina, all saw annual gains above 17% in 2022.