At Least A Quarter Of Home Sellers Have Cut Prices

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Aug 11, 8:34AM EDT · Published Aug 11, 7:27AM EDT

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Twenty-five percent of people with homes on the market as of August 1 have cut the prices of their homes at least once according to real estate research firm Trulia.

The trend has lasted four months. According to Trulia, “The total dollar amount slashed from home prices in America’s 50 largest cities was $30.1 billion, and the average discount on price-reduced homes continued to hold at 10 percent off of the original listing price.”

Price cuts continued to be high in Nevada and the Southwest. The news in one in a long line of confirming statistics that show prices are being dropped on homes and inventory is rising. Part of this is undoubtedly due to unemployment. Part can be blamed on the expiration of government tax cuts and the failure of the HAMP foreclosure prevention program

Another significant cause is the 11 million homes with underwater mortgages. The Trulia data show that these numbers will grow as price cuts put more mortgages out of the money, forcing those who want to sell homes to make payments to their banks to close a transaction. Housing, many analysts and federal authorities believed, was to start to improve in the second half of this year. Not likely.

Douglas A. McIntyre

The following U.S. cities experienced the biggest increases in price reductions from July 1, 2010 to August 1, 2010:

City	State	July 2010	August 2010	Percentage Change
Las Vegas	NV	12%	18%	56%
Fresno	CA	19%	24%	28%
El Paso	TX	18%	21%	19%
San Diego	CA	20%	23%	15%
New York	NY	17%	20%	15%
San Jose	CA	16%	18%	13%
Colorado Springs	CO	27%	30%	12%
Los Angeles	CA	23%	25%	12%
Albuquerque	NM	31%	34%	11%

August 2010 Price Reductions – Top 50 U.S. cities based on population

Rank	City	State	Percent of Listings with Price Reductions	Average Reduction (%)	Total Amount of Reductions
1	Minneapolis	MN	42%	9%	$ 33,819,493
2	Milwaukee	WI	39%	9%	$ 25,062,765
3	Dallas	TX	36%	9%	$ 156,394,606
4	Boston	MA	35%	7%	$ 47,060,800
5	Memphis	TN	35%	9%	$ 28,206,058
6	Kansas City	MO	35%	9%	$ 35,783,696
7	Albuquerque	NM	34%	8%	$ 39,954,480
8	Phoenix	AZ	34%	13%	$ 109,770,615
9	Mesa	AZ	33%	11%	$ 28,348,320
10	Columbus	OH	33%	9%	$ 23,732,304
11	Jacksonville	FL	32%	12%	$ 100,430,400
12	Arlington	TX	32%	6%	$ 9,991,944
13	Baltimore	MD	32%	11%	$ 41,873,380
14	Omaha	NE	32%	7%	$ 14,033,656
15	Tucson	AZ	32%	11%	$ 65,678,793
16	Portland	OR	32%	9%	$ 48,174,000
17	Atlanta	GA	31%	10%	$ 186,695,352
18	Virginia Beach	VA	31%	8%	$ 42,106,115
19	Chicago	IL	31%	9%	$ 226,322,091
20	Indianapolis	IN	30%	8%	$ 36,242,235
21	Cleveland	OH	30%	13%	$ 14,429,270
22	Seattle	WA	30%	8%	$ 72,773,546
23	Nashville	TN	30%	8%	$ 38,058,104
24	Colorado Springs	CO	30%	7%	$ 44,417,542
25	Philadelphia	PA	30%	9%	$ 67,681,614
26	Raleigh	NC	29%	7%	$ 35,926,488
27	Austin	TX	28%	7%	$ 90,510,222
28	Long Beach	CA	28%	9%	$ 25,491,051
29	Louisville	KY	28%	7%	$ 16,671,340
30	Houston	TX	28%	9%	$ 164,122,608
31	Tulsa	OK	28%	7%	$ 18,214,328
32	Fort Worth	TX	26%	8%	$ 39,857,393
33	Charlotte	NC	26%	9%	$ 86,347,360
34	Los Angeles	CA	25%	11%	$ 248,665,167
35	Oklahoma City	OK	25%	8%	$ 13,057,152
36	Washington	DC	25%	9%	$ 56,245,248
37	San Antonio	TX	25%	7%	$ 68,895,015
38	San Francisco	CA	24%	9%	$ 73,594,112
39	Fresno	CA	24%	11%	$ 11,712,696
40	Honolulu	HI	24%	8%	$ 37,236,150
41	Miami	FL	23%	14%	$ 173,200,000
42	San Diego	CA	23%	8%	$ 92,447,080
43	Sacramento	CA	21%	9%	$ 16,045,404
44	El Paso	TX	21%	7%	$ 16,245,365
45	Denver	CO	21%	8%	$ 47,192,002
46	New York	NY	20%	10%	$ 458,233,952
47	Las Vegas	NV	18%	13%	$ 94,540,446
48	Detroit	MI	18%	26%	$ 10,650,914
49	San Jose	CA	18%	8%	$ 30,417,552
50	Oakland	CA	17%	10%	$ 10,289,096

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.