Over the past month, Occupy camps, often focused at a park or plaza in a city, are being broken up, but that doesn’t mean the protestors are disappearing. Rather, they’re venturing into other locations and, in some cases, new directions. One is Occupy Our Homes, beginning with Occupy Our Homes Day on December 5.

What, specifically, has been going on? In Oakland, the Occupy Our Homes movement took over a vacant duplex and demanded that this and other deserted properties be turned into low-income housing. In other parts of the country, protestors are siding with homeowners dealing with unresponsive and irresponsible banks.

Regarding these strategies, a member of Occupy Oakland’s Home Defense Committee told the press: “We are diversifying, trying to address issues people find most problematic. We want to put more pressure on banks and show how they caused this problem.”

As Occupy Our Homes gains momentum, Daily Finance examined the tactics used by the protestors. These include:

• Reoccupying vacant properties or moving in those without homes, including former homeowners.
• Shutting down auctions and scaring off bidders to prevent foreclosures from being sold.
• Working with banks to delay the foreclosure process.
• Working with banks on loan modification.

Movements to take back foreclosed properties are happening on both coasts. Take Back The Land, operating since 2006, has been focusing on helping people kicked out of their homes move back in. Presently, 1.6 million properties in Florida are vacant, while 57,643 individuals are homeless. Focusing on communities of color in Miami, Take Back The Land has allied with Occupy Our Homes but has additional goals in mind. Aside from moving individuals back into homes, they aim to cut down on gentrification, which ends up increasing the cost of living in poorer neighborhoods.

Last week, we published a list of the 13 real estate markets hit hardest by the housing crisis, courtesy of Forbes. With the exception of Boise, Id., and Tacoma, Wash., all other markets were in Nevada, Florida, California, and Arizona. But, with 50 states in the union, why are these struggling real estate markets clustered together? Associated Press discovered that house flipping had a great influence in these areas.

House flipping, for those that don’t know, involves an investor purchasing a property (or, usually more than one), fixing it up, and putting it back on the market at a higher price. In the first half of the 2000s, down payments were low and credit easy to come by, so investors, according to a report from researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, took advantage by purchasing multiple properties and putting them back on the market at a higher price. As a result, housing prices in these states practically doubled from 2000 to ’06.

Unfortunately, those who purchased these properties ended up seeing the average price drop significantly post-2007, and if they didn’t file for foreclosure, these homeowners are now stuck with underwater mortgages. As we mentioned roughly a month ago, underwater mortgages weigh down on the economy, preventing a full recovery.

Why was the proliferation of house-flipping discovered now and not four years ago? According to the Associated Press piece, this aspect of real estate went undocumented. To prevent such a crash in the future, however, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York report states that regulators must limit speculative buying.

House-flipping itself, on the other hand, hasn’t died out as the result of the real estate crash. Instead, investors are purchasing fewer properties, and those that are bought are likely foreclosures. As a result, the process an investor makes in the present from flipping houses is likely less than what would have been made pre-2007.

Which housing markets have seen the greatest drops in prices? Forbes compiled a list of 13 metropolitan areas in which housing prices fell eight to 15 percent over the past year. The figures were compiled by Local Market Monitor, which examined price drops from October 2010 to September 2011 and projected figures for the next year.

The 13 metropolitan areas and their rates of decrease are:

1. Las Vegas, Nevada – -15.2%
2. Boise, Idaho – -13.4%
3. Phoenix, Arizona – -13%
4. Tucson – -11.9%
5. Fresno, California – -11%
6. Orlando, Florida – -10.9%
7. Sacramento, California – -9.3%
8. Jacksonville, Florida – -8.9%
9. Tacoma, Washington – -8.8%
10. West Palm Beach, Florida – -8.5%
11. Atlanta, Georgia – -8.5%
12. Bakersfield, California – -8.5%
13. Stockton, California – -8.2%

Various factors went into these significant price drops. All markets have a large percentage of foreclosures. When a foreclosure is sold, the price is contributed to the average for the area, and with enough foreclosed properties in a city, the overall property value goes down. In Las Vegas, as we saw, as well as in other cities, nearly half of all properties are foreclosures, and prices have dropped 50 percent on some homes over the past decade.

The subprime housing crisis contributed toward many of these drops, but this isn’t always the case. In Boise, unemployment caused many to stop paying mortgages. About the price drop in her area, Cristina Pescaru, a Realtor with Gold Key Real Estate, told the press:

“Prices in Boise Proper specifically haven’t come down quite as much as people expect, but in other areas around the city, prices have come down as much as 50% from where they were a few years ago. I think we absolutely haven’t seen the bottom of the market here.”

Overall, nationally, prices only dropped 4.5 percent over the same time period. Since the start of the housing crisis in 2007, however, the overall national price is 35-percent lower.

When it comes to assessing the value of your home on the real estate market, what’s better, an agent or an estimation program? While the latter is definitely quicker, speed can make accuracy fall to the wayside. In some instances, being slightly off is insignificant; in real estate, however, gross inaccuracies are devaluing Connecticut real estate.

According to a piece in the Hartford Courant, Zillow.com, a popular tool for sellers in assessing the worth of their properties, uses an algorithm to assess a home’s worth, taking into account publicly available data like sale price, square feet, number of beds and baths, and recent home sales in the area. The site claims to not factor in foreclosure sales. Yet, while the site claims to have a 7.9-percent error rate nationally and 6.8-percent rate in Connecticut, a fair amount of sellers in Connecticut find that Zillow’s estimates are greatly above or below the actual value.

The Courant cites an instance in Glastonbury in which two home sales lowered average neighborhood prices, and about this, Enza Dandeneau, of Prudential Connecticut Realty in Glastonbury, told the newspaper:

“Zillow deals with absolutes and that is not always valid. You could have two houses, exactly the same style, one with updated features like granite countertops, central air and hardwood floors, and the other without. That makes a huge difference.”

On a similar note, Evan Berman, of ERA Broder Group in West Hartford, explained that a website can’t offer the same accuracy as a professional:

“The simple fact is they have never been on the street or the town, let alone stepped inside the house to see the condition and enhancements. If your house is above or below average, the Zestimate [Zillow’s estimate] is inaccurate.”

Essentially, consulting a website can be a reference point in selling a home and gathering information, but the value should not become the be-all-end-all in obtaining a price. While a website like Zillow takes into account only data, a local real estate agent is more familiar with each neighborhood’s and town’s market conditions and can produce a closer estimate.

Spending power, often resulting from wider-spread employment, and the ability to purchase homes go hand-in-hand. Once demand for new homes increases, prices go up and new construction, with corresponding jobs, is possible. Yet, for all the recent talk about unemployment holding back the housing market, real estate has itself to blame, somewhat.

According to a recent piece in The Week, underwater mortgages are a drain on both the housing market and the economy. Resulting from homes purchased during the housing bubble, underwater mortgages have resulted in borrowers owing $700 billion. Presently, 29 percent of homeowners, or 14.7 million people, are paying off an underwater mortgage – one that, in fact, may be two or three times the property’s current worth.

But what about refinancing or loan modification? Think about the disparity in prices between 2007 and the present. As The Week explains, the amounts owed by homeowners are still too much for refinancing or loan modification, and to keep credit in good standing, homeowners continue to pay off these outrageous debts.

The Week proposed the following solution to getting rid of underwater mortgages and, essentially, stimulating both the real estate market and economy: forgiving these debts. Sam Khater, an economist at real estate data firm CoreLogic told the press: “Until that negative equity recedes, the housing market is not going to recover. It’s a giant anchor that’s holding back the economy.”

What do you think the best solution would be? Housing prices may not reach 2007 highs for the next few decades, and until then, homeowners with underwater mortgages won’t put their properties up for sale or, worse, will file for foreclosure, which ends up lowering the average price per home. Yet, $700 billion is a large amount still owed. The Week hypothesizes that prices could continue falling until 2013, preventing recovery of the housing market.