Wednesday February 24, 2010

interesting article attached.....with Nevada leading the way and AZ in second place but 'trying harder'.......
how much more of this is there to go???

Looks like AZ won't be leading the way to recovery nor the quickest to bounce back ! ! !

Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 10:05am EST
Fla. ranks third in underwater mortgages
South Florida Business Journal
The state of Florida has the third-highest percentage of homes under water, according to a report by Santa Ana, Calif.-based First American CoreLogic, a real estate information company,
Nationwide, 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, up from 10.7 million (23 percent) at the end of the third quarter, according to the report.
Negative equity, often referred to as “under water” or “upside down,” means that borrowers owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. Negative equity can occur because of a decline in value, an increase in mortgage debt or a combination of both.
Forty-eight percent of Florida's mortgages were under water. That translates to nearly 2.2 million of the more than 4.5 million mortgages. An additional 171,710 mortgages (3.8 percent) in the Sunshine State were near negative equity.
Only Nevada, which had 70 percent of all of its mortgaged properties under water, and Arizona, at 51 percent, had more. Michigan (39 percent) and California (35 percent) rounded out the top five.
The net increase in the number of negative equity borrowers in the fourth quarter was 620,000, with the largest percentage increases occurring in Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. Among the states with the highest negative equity shares, California had the smallest increase in the negative equity share, which only rose 0.4 percent, to 35.1 percent. In numerical terms, Florida had the largest increase in the number of negative equity borrowers, rising by more than 141,000, followed by Georgia (65,000) and Illinois (55,000).
"Negative equity is a significant drag on both the housing market and on economic growth. It is driving foreclosures and decreasing mobility for millions of homeowners," said Mark Fleming, chief economist with First American CoreLogic, in a statement.
First American CoreLogic’s data includes 47 million properties with a mortgage, which account for more than 85 percent of all mortgages in the U.S.