20% of mortgages are underwater

20% of mortgages are underwater
Copyright By Reuters
August 9, 2010
http://chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/08/20-of-mortgages-are-underwater.html


More than 20 percent of the nation’s mortgage borrowers owe more than their homes are worth. At 21.5 percent for the third quarter, it is a small improvement over the previous quarter, when 23.3 percent of loans were underwater, according to real estate Web site Zillow.com.

This so-called negative equity is a hotly watched statistic because it is a prime predictor of foreclosure — second only to loss of income.

“It is the paramount challenge facing housing markets,“ said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist. “We already have had record levels of foreclosure and, combined with high unemployment, negative equity is very toxic to the market.“

But don’t cheer about the slight gains in the past three months. Most of the improvement comes because so many people lost their homes to foreclosure.

In some markets, residents were helped by improving home prices. As prices rise, it narrows the gap between what home owners owe and what they could sell for. As a result, hard-hit metro areas such as Merced, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., recorded huge declines in the number of underwater borrowers. Merced was down to 40 percent while Orlando fell to 64.6 percent.

In fact, most markets trended up. Only 25 of 142 markets surveyed lost ground, led by Lansing, Mich., where negative equity grew to 31.5 percent.

Neighboring Detroit also worsened, jumping up to 31.4 percent, as did Grand Junction, Colo., where the it grew to 31.2 percent.

Las Vegas continued to lead the nation, with 73.9 percent of all mortgage borrowers owing more than their properties are worth. In Phoenix, that total is 66.8 percent; in Orlando, 64.6 percent; and in Reno, 61.9 percent.