The condo correction is clearing: six markets now sit below their 2006 bubble peaks

Wolf Richter's July read of the Zillow Home Value Index counts 33 bigger US markets where mid-tier condo and co-op prices have fallen 15% to 33% from their own prior peaks ^[1], and in six of those the index now sits below the 2006 peak of the last housing bubble ^[2]. Single-family housing gets the coverage, but condos are where the post-2021 unwind is actually printing, and the depth of it changes what a condo lien is worth as collateral.

The six that have round-tripped two decades are Oakland, Contra Costa County in the East Bay, Sarasota County, Cape Coral, Fort Myers and Orlando ^[2] - four Florida markets and two Bay Area ones ^[3]. In at least one of the 33, prices are back to where they first were in mid-2005, 21 years ago ^[4]. Nine markets, from Oakland to Jacksonville, are down 21% or more, and three in California and Florida are down over 30% ^[5][6].

The peaks being measured from are recent: they landed between 2021 and 2024, with the vast majority in mid-2022 ^[7]. That matters for vintage. The run-up into those peaks was 50% to 70% in some cities over the two years from mid-2020 ^[8], on top of 10-year gains of 180% to 350% ^[9]. Loans written into the 2021-2022 window in the six sub-2006 markets are now marked against a comp set that has given back everything since the last bubble ^[2], and the concentration in Florida and the East Bay ^[3] means the exposure is not evenly spread across regional books.

The direction of travel has not turned. Houston and Tempe crossed the minus-15% line in July and joined the list, and no market that was on the list in June came off it ^[10]. Another 37 bigger cities are down 8% to 14% from their peaks ^[11], which puts roughly 70 bigger markets in some stage of decline ^[12]. Richter flags San Antonio and Dallas as a few bad months from crossing into the steeper group ^[13].

Two constraints on reading too much into it. The index is a backward-looking, seasonally adjusted three-month average, built from public records, MLS, brokerage and other feeds and including off-market and for-sale-by-owner deals ^[14]. It lags and it smooths, so the current cash market in Cape Coral or Oakland is likely worse than the July print rather than better. And condo share varies enormously: in some dense cities condos and co-ops are the majority of home sales, while in most other markets they are a relatively small portion ^[15]. This is a collateral-type problem, not a national housing call.

On the mechanism, be honest about what the source does and does not say. Richter notes condos face different dynamics than single-family homes, dynamics that fuel outsized booms and busts ^[16], but the excerpt does not quantify the HOA, reserve or insurance channel. Anyone holding paper in Florida or the Bay Area should be pulling association financials and assessment histories directly rather than inferring them from a price index.

What to watch: whether San Antonio and Dallas cross minus 15% ^[13], whether the June-to-July pattern of additions with no exits holds ^[10], and whether any of the 37 markets in the 8% to 14% band start to converge on the Florida and California declines ^[11][6].