Interesting chart of real estate declines in U.S. metros over the past 30 years.

The record for the biggest drop? Lafayette, Louisiana — a.k.a. where I grew up — in the oil bust from 1986 to 1991, when property values declines an astounding 40 percent.

I was a kid then (aged 11 to 16), and while I knew the economy wasn’t good, it’s an indicator of the childhood ignorance that I never would have thought the drop was that severe. I just can’t believe that I didn’t hear more about it — not to mention the fact that I would have pegged the declines more to the early ’80s, not later.

I suppose different classes experience busts in different ways. For my aspirationally-working-class family, the key issue was job losses — there not being offshore jobs for the menfolk any more. Declines in asset values were secondary, since whatever savings we would have been able to generate would almost certainly have sat in cash at the savings and loan — not in property, not in stocks or bonds.

19 March 2007

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