U.S. Had Worst Housing Market In The World Last Year

The U.S. won the dubious honor of having the worst housing market in the world in 2007, recording an 8.9 percent drop in housing prices nationwide. The second worst housing market after the U.S. was Ireland, which saw a 7.32 percent drop. We all knew things were bad in the U.S. housing market, but the worst in the world? That is quite a distinction.

When looking at these numbers we must remember a couple things, though.

First, not all the countries in the world provide national housing market data, so many countries are not even included in the data set.

Second, the U.S. is a large country and housing markets across cities and states are different from one another, so the number is simply a national average. Florida and California in particular had an extremely strong negative effect on these calculations, while states such as Texas have actually held up fairly well through the housing crash. Thus comparing the U.S. housing market to one such as Hong Kong, for example, is a stretch at best.

Nevertheless, we can still consider ourselves to be the champions of housing market futility, and while there is no trophy involved, we can revel in the fact that we are #1.

*Chart from Global Property Guide

All housing market data used in this article was provided by Global Property Guide.