If you’re curious about how much, in aggregate, U.S. citizens are worth, and how that worth compares to the value in 2007, you can visit The Big Picture and see a variety of charts, created by an organization called The Chart Store.
The second set of charts on the web site shows that in the second quarter of 2007, Americans were worth $65.796 trillion. By the end of the first quarter of 2009, Americans were worth $49.397 trillion–a loss of wealth amounting to $16.399 trillion–a 24% decline. So if you didn’t lose a quarter of your total wealth during the downturn, consider yourself fortunate. The good news: in the last two years, Americans have accumulated $8.661 trillion, up 17.53% from the bottom, but still down 11.76% from the peak. Interestingly, housing is still trading at approximately 2003 price levels, and according to the charts, the total value hasn’t gone up much (if at all) since the downturn. (see PDF file below) But what is really remarkable is how, since 1952, housing prices have never gone down–until they suddenly started spiralling in 2006.
See the second chart at the end of this article, and remember that the horizontal line represents a 0% growth rate. Anytime the jagged ‘rate of change’ line is above that flat horizontal line, it means that the total value of household real estate went up that year–sometimes (1975 or 1991) inching up very slowly; other times (1976-1982; 1998-2005) rocketing ahead at more than 15% a year.
To view things in a positive light, perhaps the thing to remember is that total household wealth and total household real estate values today are above where they were 10 years ago–and still above the levels of any other country.
And we’re well over halfway back to the all-time high, three years after the downturn. So, in this time of crises, is the U.S. really in that much trouble? Or are we simply not used to taking a few steps back opposed to our usual pattern of consistent growth?
Open this PDF file to view the Market Value of Household Real Estate and the Annual Rate of Change of that value from 1952-2011.