WHETHER at the dinner table, Starbucks or just standing around the office water cooler, Question No. 1 for most property owners these days is this: Is my home's value tanking yet, and if not, when?
The short answer is that home-price appreciation has slowed to single-digit levels in most Los Angeles County neighborhoods, homes are worth less than they were last summer in a few communities and values are falling faster than most experts anticipated.
The decline is not as rapid as that of the 1990s, said Raphael Bostic, associate professor at USC's School of Policy, Planning and Development, who described what's happening as "a long, grinding slowdown, not a drop off a cliff." In the scenario of a decade and a half ago, prices sank 17% in six years.