According to this ABC Australia report, land values around the world are plummeting. The hardest hit country? The Ukraine.

The value of rural land in the Ukraine has plummeted a staggering 75 percent. The Australian news report indicates that the basics of the problem are the same there as everywhere else: thanks to the credit crisis the previously well-lined pockets of investors are no more. The report also references, but does not detail, a 5 percent drop in land values for the United States and Great Britain.

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A University of Florida study has put a staggering number on just how badly the economic crisis has impacted rural land values in the Sunshine State. The study concludes that land values plummeted upwards of 55 percent in 2008 from highs just one year previously.

The study focused exclusively on rural land, mostly those outside of urban areas that would have been hot spots for development just prior to the worldwide economic collapse.

“In some cases, it’s almost like a fire sale,” said Rodney Clouser, the UF professor of food and resource economics who led the survey.

The study found the northern part of the state most affected with values dropping the aforementioned 55 percent.

Farmland, that which traditionally would be the main focus of The Land Report readers, saw declines that reached as much as 26 percent.

What’s worse is the predicted continued decline in 2009.

Land prices are expected to continue their drop through 2009 — although not as dramatically as in 2008. Survey responses from individuals involved in the Florida real estate market predict an overall drop between 5 and 17 percent.

The full UF report is available here.

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I saw the story bright and early when I scanned the print version of the Journal. Not surprisingly, it singled out the usual suspects: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Miami. In the bloodbath since the housing bubble burst, home prices in those markets have fallen as much as 31 percent. Forget 0 percent down. Even with traditional financing of 20 percent down numbers like these take a toll. Then I came across another angle on this dire example of home economics courtesy of Brian Sullivan’s blog. The Fox Business anchor, whose show I visited in October, tied the homeowners’ plight to the $300 billion bailout that Senator McCain proposed during Tuesday night’s debate. Last but not least, I noticed the story on the Journal’s website yet again this morning. The article has been and is the newspaper’s most popular read. For that matter it is also the most emailed story as well.

With an estimated 12 million homeowners owing more than their home is worth, it should be clear to all of us that we are far from out of the woods in this crisis.

P.S. Someone kindly inform the Journal’s talented writers that American homeowners don’t owe a dime on their mortgages. To say so is to misuse a common business term. Anyone who has financed a house knows that a mortgage is not a loan. It is the legal instrument a homeowner uses to pledge his/her/their property as collateral for a loan. Homeowners give mortgages. Lenders write loans. Or at least they used to.

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