Thursday, March 12, 2009

Effervescent Equity: The Federal Reserve’s Household Equity Estimate Q4 2008

Today, the Federal Reserve released their Q4 2008 Flow of Funds report showing 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 10.51% or $2.153 trillion since Q4 2007 bringing the change since the peak level set in Q4 2006 to a decline of 16.23% or $3.552 trillion.

Worse yet, owners’ equity in household real estate assets declined 21.14% or $2.112 trillion since Q4 2007 bringing the change since the peak level set in Q4 2005 to a decline of 36.96% or $4.620 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 42.98%.

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.