90% of Mortgaged Homes Have Equity Again

Daily Real Estate News | Monday, January 12, 2015

About 273,000 homes returned to positive equity in the third quarter of 2014, bringing the total to 44.6 million of all properties with a mortgage, according to a newly released equity report from CoreLogic using data from the third quarter of 2014. That number represents around 90 percent of all mortgaged properties nationwide.

If home prices rose by 5 percent more—which is largely predicted to happen this year—an additional 1 million home owners now in negative equity would also move into positive territory, CoreLogic reports.

“Negative equity continued to decrease in the third quarter as did the level of homes mired in the foreclosure process,” says Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “This should hopefully translate into less friction in the housing market as we move forward. Better fundamentals supporting home ownership in the face of higher rents should attract more first-time home buyers to the market this year and next.”

The largest declines in the negative equity share of home owners occurred in Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, and Florida.

Some home owners holding equity are still considered “under-equitied.” About 9.4 million—or 19 percent—of properties with positive equity have less than 20 percent of equity, and 1.3 million have less than 5 percent of equity in their homes.

Overall, about 5.1 million homes—or 10.3 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage—were still in negative equity territory in the third quarter. That is a slight drop from 5.4 million in the second quarter, but down 3 percentage points year-over-year when the total stood at 6.5 million in the third quarter of 2013.