Zomby Woof wrote: Average, not median.
Both the mean and the median are types of averages but I assume you're following the common convention of referring to the mean as the average.
BTW, when a distribution is normal, the mean, median, & mode will all be equivalent.
Statistical fun fact…the average human has one testicle.
And one ovary. 
aircooled wrote: I doesn't matter if it makes a dent or not, that's not really relevant to my point. The fact is, if the house goes back to the original sale price or beyond, that's a $150,000 in value that the owner will never need to pay off. $150,000 may not seem like a lot of money for someone who buys 3 million dollar houses, but for most other people it is, and for some, it will buy an entire house. If you are saying many houses will never return to their sale value, I find that hard to believe. It may take 20 years, 40 years, who knows, but those are not unreasonably huge periods of time as far as mortgages are concerned.
I still think some of you guys are over-analyzing this...
Yes, $150K is a lot of money to us (more than my house is worth), but that's not within the context of the issue. If somebody is behind payments on a $3M house or even a $1M house, a $150K write-down isn't going to make much of a difference. They'll still be behind and in most cases they still won't be able to make the payments. It might allow a small percentage of them to re-mortgage, but it's unlikely.
This whole thing is nothing more than the banks throwing a meaningless bone out there to say they're doing something.
Curmudgeon wrote: And one ovary.
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