From the http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ site:
First American CoreLogic reported today that more than 11.3 million, or 24 percent, of all residential properties with mortgages, were in negative equity at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009, up from 10.7 million and 23 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2009. An additional 2.3 million mortgages were approaching negative equity at the end of last year, meaning they had less than five percent equity. Together, negative equity and near�negative equity mortgages accounted for nearly 29 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide.
From the report:
The good news for Tennessee home owners is that negative equity continues to be concentrated in five states: Nevada, which had the highest percentage negative equity with 70 percent of all of its mortgaged properties underwater, followed by Arizona (51 percent), Florida (48 percent), Michigan (39 percent) and California (35 percent). Among the top five states, the average negative equity share was 42 percent, compared to 15 percent for the remaining 45 states. In numerical terms, California (2.4 million) and Florida (2.2 million) had the largest number of negative equity mortgages accounting for 4.6million, or 41 percent, of all negative equity loans.
While Tennesssee mortgages aren’t as often underwater, they too frequently exceed the underlying home’s value (about 14% of all Tennessee mortgage balances exceed the underlying property’s value and another 7% are close). This is of course what forces short sales and causes borrowers to be more likely to default. It seems that the number of foreclosures will be at least as great during 2010 as they were in 2009. With several new Gatlinburg area real estate foreclosure properties assigned to us by a number of banks already this week we are off to a hectic start to the year.
