• For many, many home owners, this chart may have very little pertinence to the value of your home.  These calculations are based on median sales prices, and your home (and/or neighborhood) may have performed VERY differently during any of these time periods.
    
  
• If you bought your house between 2005 and 2008, it's a tough time to try to sell.  (Hopefully, that's not news to anyone.)
   
  
• Home values are still declining (year-over-year), so despite today's buyers getting great deals on their houses, they still need to plan to be in them for at least five years to be sure to see gains in their home value.
   
  
• If you bought in 2004 or prior, you should do just fine if you are selling today.
  

• Sure, if a borrower can't be approved the deal won't close, but if the appraisal is not satisfactory, the deal also won't close.  Why, then, must we wait so long to order the appraisal?
• Sometimes the final approval of the borrower can drag on (and on and on) --- which delays (and delays and delays) the ordering of and completion of the appraisal. 
  

If you're buying a house, make sure your lender orders your appraisal as soon as you have made loan application --- especially since the fee that you pay at application is at least partially for the appraisal. 

If you're selling a house, don't assume that the appraisal has been ordered as soon as the buyer makes loan application.  Follow up and make sure that the appraisal is ordered ASAP.

If any lenders can explain why this is happening, or provide any good reasons for it happening this way, I'm all ears.

• House is listed for $300K on January 1
• House is reduced to to $280K on March 1 (roughly 6%)

As compared to....

• House is listed for $300K on January 1
• House is reduced to $290K on March 1 (roughly 3%)
  
• House is reduced to $280K on May 1 (roughly 3%)
  

Unless you think you have a great chance of selling the house after just one of the 3% price reductions, it's almost always better to make a faster, larger price reduction.  This price change is more noticeable to buyers and more quickly gets you to a what will hopefully be a realistic selling point.

As a further example, I have seen sellers who have knocked off $5K every other month for an entire year.  Oh, how I wish they had just knocked off $30K that first month.  Each of the progressive $5K reductions had very little impact -- but a quick $30K reduction would have been much more news-worthy and may have inspired a buyer to act.