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The Option Arm Triplets: Dead Banks Walking

I am a homeowner and I live in California. Home values are declining, but let's not misstate the facts. "Home values" and "median home prices" are not necessarily equal. Therefore, it is very misleading for the author to rely upon the CAR's "40% decline in median home price" statistic.
"Median home price" measures the price at which half of the houses sold that month sold for more than that price while half of the houses sold for less. According to MDA Dataquick, only about half of the 40% "median home price" decline during the past year was due to a depreciation in "home value." (www.mercedsunstar.com/....)
The other half of the decline was due to the fact that a lot of homes sold last year in the $500k - $800k range due to the prevalence of jumbo home loans. This year, (for numerous reasons) jumbo loans are not nearly as prevalent. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of homes being sold today in California are homes that are in the $300k - $500k range. By the way, in most cases, these lower priced homes are not the same homes that were being sold last year in the $500k - $800k range.
Of course, the "median home price" is going to plummet when buyers are overwhelmingly purchasing homes in the lower pricing range and staying away from houses in the higher pricing range. But that doesn't mean that actual "home values" have declined by 40%.
Don't get me wrong, a 20% decline in "home value" is still a lot, but it is misleading to suggest that "home values" have fallen 40%.
Then the author writes: "in large portions of these states housing values have dropped by over 60%." I call B.S. on that one. According to the CAR report that the author relies upon, not one of the 20 CAR regions in CA registered "median home price" declines even close to 60% (the four highest were 52.7%, 47.7%, 47.1%, and 40.1%). And those are "median home price" declines," not "housing value" declines (which, according to MDS Dataquick, is likely only about half of those amounts.) So where exactly did the author get his information that "housing values" in "large portions of these states" have dropped by "over 60%"?
I generally don't disagree with the underlying message of this article, I just wish that people would be more accurate with respect to the numbers that they are relying upon.