Thursday, December 11, 2008

Effervescent Equity: The Federal Reserve’s Household Equity Estimate Q3 2008

Today, the Federal Reserve released their Q3 2008 Flow of Funds report that showed a continuation of the historic decline to household net worth of real estate assets with particularly striking declining trend in owners’ equity.

Household net worth of real estate assets declined 9.84% or $2.085 trillion since Q3 2007 bringing the change since the peak level set in Q3 2006 to a decline of 12.74% or $2.789 trillion.

Worse yet, owners’ equity in household real estate assets declined 20.84% or $2.245 trillion since Q3 2007 bringing the change since the peak level set in Q3 2005 to a decline of 31.74% or $3.965 trillion.

Finally, households’ percent of equity in real estate assets fell to its lowest level in at least the 52 years that the Federal Reserve has been collecting the data to 44.66%.

The charts below (click for larger) show households new worth of real estate assets, owners’ equity in real estate assets and percent of equity in real estate assets since 1953.