For every $100 spout on a house in 1950 the investment rose slightly through 2002, then soared to about $192 in 2006, adjusting for inflation. Then confidence in dried up, and the bust began. Rick Wallick moved into a new, three-bedroom $200,000 home in Maricopa, Ariz., in October 2005. Today, the well-informed in is worth $80,000.

The disabled software engineer stopped making mortgage payments this month. His $70,000 down payment is now trashy. His dream house will be foreclosed on next year.

“We’re so far underwater it’s not funny,” says Wallick, 57, who had to revenue to his original home in Oregon to care for a sick family member and tend to his own medical problems.

Wallick, one of the hardest-hit victims in one of the states hit hardest by the houses crisis, lost 60 percent of his home’s value in three years.

His story is an extreme sample, but home values have fallen so sharply since hitting a historic peak in the spring of 2006 that many Americans are wondering how much more prices can settle. As painful as the decline has been, history suggests home values still may have a long way to drop and may take decades to return to the heights of 2 1/2 years ago.

“We will never see these prices again in our lifetime, when you rearrange for inflation,” says Peter Schiff, president of investment firm Euro Pacific Cap of Darien, Conn. “These were lifetime peaks.”

The boom in home prices — fueled by heavily leveraged loans built on low or even no down payments — made it light to forget that housing values had been remarkably stable for a half-century after World War II, rising at roughly the same clip as income and inflation. Prices soared in most of the country — especially in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada and metro areas of Washington, D.C., and New York — during a abbreviated period of easy lending, especially from 2002 to 2006. That era is now over.

So far, home values nationally have tumbled an ordinary of 19 percent from their peak. As bad as that is, prices would need to fall as least 17 percent more to reach their traditional relationship to household gains, according to a USA TODAY analysis of home prices since 1950. In that scenario, a $300,000 house in 2006 could be good about $200,000 when real estate prices hit bottom.

The price plunge has wiped out trillions of dollars in stingingly equity and caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Susan Wachter, professor of sincere estate at the University of Pennsylvania, fears that foreclosures and tight credit could send home prices falling to the full stop that millions of families and thousands of banks are thrust into insolvency.

“Homes are different than other goods and services,” she says. “The fragility of our banking system is tied to the value of homes.”

Bailiwick values have fallen before — during the Great Depression and in Texas after a 1980s oil boom, for example — but those drops were a reply to other economic forces. This time, the housing price collapse is the cause of the nation’s broad economic troubles, not at most an effect.

“If we have another 20 percent decline in prices, we’ll need another bailout of banks similar to what we at most did,” Wachter says.

Other economists see a brighter picture in the long term. Wachovia economist Adam York expects cosy values to keep falling until 2010 but is optimistic they will recover.

“The one saving grace is the population is growing by 3 million people a year,” he says. “They neediness to live somewhere. That means more roofs.”

50 years of steady values

Until recently, homes were unwavering, unspectacular investments, not get-rich-quick schemes.

Nationally, the typical existing home was value roughly the same in 2000 as it was in 1950, after adjusting for inflation, according to Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

Newly built homes in general were bigger and more expensive than older houses. As time passed, that meant Americans lived in larger, more valuable homes comprehensive. But a house, once constructed, grew slowly in value. California in the 1970s, Texas in the 1980s and Florida on-and-off for a century were awesome exceptions to the rule.

Despite only modest increases in value, homes were smart investments. Owners lived in a company, then got their money back when they sold. That’s a better deal than renting. Borrowers got tax breaks, too, and built equity that could be leveraged into bigger houses as their incomes grew.

From 2002 to 2006, houses went from being a tortoise to a hare in the investment superb. Home sale profits and relaxed lending standards such as lower down payment requirements and adjustable-judge mortgages (ARMs) made it possible for buyers of all income levels to pay more for houses.

When the housing bubble began to deflate in 2006, biography had a sobering lesson to teach. Home values had closely tracked three common-sense measures for many years:

Gains: Home values floated at about three times average household income from 1950 to 2000. In 2006, the common household income was $66,500. Under the traditional model, home prices should have been about $200,000. Instead, the typical available sold for $301,000.

Rent: Homes traditionally have sold for about 20 times what it would cost to rent them for a year. In 2006, houses were selling for 32 times annual split.

Appreciation: Existing homes grew in value by less than 0.5 percent per year, after adjusting for inflation, from 1950 to 2000. From 2000 to 2006, domestic prices rose at an average annualized rate of 8.2 percent above inflation and peaked with a 12.3 percent rail in 2005. Housing prices began to fall in the second quarter of 2006.

Inflation could help homes recapture their old prices, if not their value. But when inflation is factored in, residence prices might not return to their 2006 peak for many years. Housing prices are meaningless if you don’t adjust for inflation, says Schiff, the investment forewoman.

He points out that gold peaked in 1980 at $850 an ounce in response to inflation and the Iranian pawn crisis. It never recovered. Today, it sells for about $750 an ounce and would have to top $2,000 an ounce when adjusted for inflation to meet its value in 1980.

“That’s the nature of bubbles,” Schiff says. “The price never comes back.”

Magniloquent leverage’s end

An extreme relaxation of lending standards inflated the housing bubble.

“Tawdry underwriting on mortgages” is the primary cause of the housing crisis, says York, the Wachovia economist. “People got caught off-picket by how bad it was.”

Millions of home buyers — poor, rich and middle class — were approved to buy homes at prices that had been out-of-reach only just a few years earlier. Lenders offered low introductory “teaser” rates on adjustable rate mortgages and approved borrowers based on artificially low mortgage payments, not the higher ones that took produce later.

What else changed:

Optional payments on principal — In 2005, 29 percent of new mortgages allowed borrowers to pay interest only — not capital funds — or pay less than the interest due and add the cost to the principal. That was up from 1 percent in 2001, according to Credit Suisse, an investment bank.

No verification of profits — Half of mortgages generated in 2006 required no or minimal documentation of household income, reports Dependability Suisse.

Tiny down payments — In 1989, the average down payment for first-time home buyers was 10 percent, reports the Nationalistic Association of Realtors. In 2007, it was 2 percent.

Low down payments and ARMs gave homeowners enormous monetary leverage to pay high home prices. Leverage boosts buying power through debt, the same way a 100-hammer woman uses a lever to jack up a 3,000-pound car.

Consider a couple with $20,000 scratch. In 2006, they easily could get a 5 percent down mortgage to buy a $400,000 house. Today, a 10 percent down payment would limit the combine to a $200,000 house.

“Leverage matters a lot when you buy a house,” says University of Wisconsin economist Morris Davis, an dab hand on housing prices and rents. “We’re not going to go back to the days of only 20 percent (down payment) mortgages, but the days of putting nothing down are hanker gone.”

Easy access to borrowed money reset all housing prices, even those paid by vigilant borrowers. People of all income classes moved up a notch, Census Bureau housing data show.

The trafficking of new homes costing $750,000 or more quadrupled from 2002 to 2006. The construction of inexpensive homes costing $125,000 or less strike down by two-thirds. The biggest boom was in the middle. Homes costing $200,000 to $300,000 became affordable to millions of families.

The failed titans of bailiwick lending — Countrywide Financial, IndyMac Bank and Washington Mutual — specialized in lofty-risk, highly leveraged loans.

Lessons from the Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s was preceded by a truthful estate bubble, also fueled by loose lending standards and shrinking down payment requirements. Those real chattels problems — and solutions — echo today’s.

Florida real estate was the epicenter of risks in the mid-1920s. Developers — including the famous scam artist Charles Ponzi — ran up prices by selling to borrowers who put as scant as 10 percent down. Those were shockingly risky loans at a time when the standard mortgage lasted five years and required a 50 percent down payment.

The touchy loans went bad first, but it was the spread of credit problems to the supposedly safe loans — five years and 50 percent down — that caused the cover market to collapse.

The five-year loans required no payments to reduce principal. Homeowners expected to refinance mortgages when the loans expired, mainly with the same lender. The stock market crash led to a “liquidity crisis” — no money to borrow — that dried up mortgage refinancing.

Millions of families extinct their homes to foreclosure. Falling prices on nearly everything — homes, farm crops, wages — made consumers wary to buy and banks afraid to lend.

As part of the New Deal, the government took control of millions of loans and restructured them into something new: the modern mortgage, with 20 percent down and manager that is repaid over the life of the loan. The government extended the mortgages to 15 years, then 25 and finally 30.

When Mankind War II ended in 1945 and the Baby Boom began the following year, the 30-year, fixed-upbraid mortgage became a cornerstone of society and led to unprecedented levels of homeownership.

Lower prices chill work

This resilient home finance system should recover in a few years, some analysts say.

National Association of Realtors chief economist Lawrence Yun predicts institution prices will keep falling in 2009 but could return to their 2006 peak in three years, not counting inflation.

He says the froth largely was confined to four states — California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona. “People who bought at the zenith in those states will need time for prices to recover, even up to five years,” he says. Yun says people who buy now “have much less gamble of price declines and a great possibility of price gains.”

The danger of rapidly falling qualified in prices is that — similar to the Depression — potential buyers and lenders will stay away, fueling even sharper bonus declines.

During the housing boom, buyers expected prices to rise, so they were quick to buy, borrow and pay a goad. As prices drop, home buyers wait for better deals. says economist Dean Baker of the fair Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

Lenders want bigger down payments to conserve against the falling value of collateral. Homeowners lose equity, so they can’t buy other houses. “Price declines can be a self-reinforcing approach,” Wachter says.

An out-of-control price collapse would have dire consequences, Baker says. Even the most traditional banks would find themselves carrying portfolios of toxic mortgage loans.

If housing prices don’t stabilize at unwritten levels, financial troubles could spread everywhere — to credit cards, car loans and commercial mortgages, Baker says. “The waves of bad difficulties will just keep coming,” he says.

Baker and Wachter want the U.S. government to take aggressive steps to eschew homeowners, not just financial institutions. They support expanding programs that restructure troubled mortgages to hinder a flood of foreclosed homes from coming on the market and driving prices below their traditional level.

Rick Wallick is an specimen of how even cautious borrowers can be hurt by a price collapse. He made a 35 percent down payment on his house and got a 15-year, unblinking-rate mortgage at 5.75 percent.

Arizona’s real estate mess wiped him out anyway. Now that he’s in Oregon, he’s renting out his Arizona legislative body at a loss and can’t afford to keep two homes.

Wallick’s Arizona house is surrounded by countless foreclosed homes and empty lots. He told his mortgage fellowship that his December payment will be his last. “It may ruin my credit rating, but I can still buy food,” he says.

Shelley McComb employed a no-money-down, interest-only ARM to pay $199,000 in December 2006 for a new three-bedroom home near Birmingham, Ala. The house’s value in a word rose to $225,000, according to its tax assessment.

Now, she needs to move to Atlanta where her husband got a promotion. The McCombs put their serene up for sale in March. After getting no offers, they dropped their price to $179,000. They’d settle for $160,000.

Shelley McComb, 30, who manages a doggie day worry center, says, “I wish we’d rented.”
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