by Calculated Risk on 4/15/2008 04:20:00 PM

From the Regions Financial conference call:

Steven Alexopoulos, JP Morgan - Analyst: In terms of home equity, the second lien that went delinquent, or into default in the quarter, what were you typically doing there? Where were you writing them down, holding the judgment, or are you going through with buying out the first and going through foreclosure?

Dowd Ritter, Regions Financial Corp. - CEO & President: No, I would say basically the jump there that you see, is when we talked about valuation decline and, you know, probably anybody you talk to at any bank that lived through the late 80's and the early 90's, to me, the biggest difference in what's happening right now is, I'll use the word velocity, and it's how fast things have changed, and the biggest change that we've seen, quarter over quarter, and even if you go back and look at third to fourth and comparing them, is property valuations in certain markets. I would tell you that in a few of those that you saw us basically write off, we did not write them down, and because some of those -- they did have firsts, but there are cases where people as early as 18 to 24 months ago had one value on that property, and as they started to sell it or refinance it, they realize that valuation was 40% below what it was 18 to 24 months ago, and they're walking away from those homes in those markets.
emphasis added

Wow. The CEO of Regions is seeing 40% price declines in some markets over the last 1 1/2 to 2 years.