Third of Tampa Bay area homes sold at loss last year

About 28 percent of homes in the Tampa Bay area sold at a loss the past year. And guess what? That's not too shabby.

According to Zillow.com, which keeps tabs on real estate in 163 markets, 30.2 percent of homes nationally sold for less than what the owner paid.

While some markets like Los Angeles (48 percent) and Las Vegas (65 percent) represented a disproportionate percentage of homes sold at a loss, even places like Washington, D.C., (38 percent) and Detroit (53 percent) came off worse than the Tampa Bay area.

The problem was less pronounced in places like Dallas (11 percent), Austin, Texas, (6 percent) and Little Rock, Ark. (15 percent).

Zillow said local home values dropped 16.6 percent in the year ending Sept. 30 to settle at $158,054.