$2 Trillion of Negative Real Estate Equity for U.S. Households by 2010

This Wall Street Journal article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126040517376983621.html)
gives us insight into the real estate market.

Many home-owners can no longer afford or want to afford their homes. Some are leaving behind their homes and mortgages right away, while others are simply halting payments until the bank kicks them out. That's freeing up cash to use in other ways.


Analysts at Deutsche Bank Securities expect 21 million U.S. households to end up owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth by the end of 2010. If one in five of those households defaults, the losses to banks and investors could exceed $400 billion. As a proportion of the economy, that's roughly equivalent to the losses suffered in the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s.