Number of depreciating U.S. homes triples

The percentage of U.S. homes that are losing value on a monthly basis has more than tripled over the last year

The number of U.S. homes losing value on a monthly basis has more than tripled over the last year, according to new data from Weiss Residential Research.

The percentage of homes that are depreciating in value rose from 7.6% to 23.4% over the last year, while the number of appreciating homes has dropped more than 12%, from 65.2% to 56.8%, according to the company’s analysis of trends across nearly 100 million homes.

“While a majority of homes nationwide is still gaining value, the national trend is clearly downward,” said Allan Weiss, CEO of Weiss Residential Research. “With a decline in year-over-year prices in the existing home sales report released today by the National Association of Realtors, even the national median price reports are picking up on the trend, reflecting the growing number of homes that are changing from appreciation to depreciation.

According to Weiss, even markets with high levels of appreciation saw a year-over-year decline in the percentage of homes gaining more than 1.5%. Reno, Nev., for instance, led the country in appreciating properties in July, with 91.4% of homes gaining value on a monthly basis. A year ago, however, that number was 93.7%.

Fayetteville, N.C., meanwhile, is the nation’s worst metro area in terms of monthly price appreciation. Its share of appreciating homes fell from 22.9% in July of 2014 to just 18% in July of 2015, according to Weiss.