Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips

One in four properties nationwide are “equity rich," according to a new report released by real estate data firm ATTOM Data Solutions. To be considered as such, homeowners with financing must currently hold a mortgage that is 50 percent or less of the property’s estimated market value. As home prices keep setting records, the number of homeowners with equity in their homes is growing. More than 13.6 million properties were considered “equity rich” in the second quarter, according to the report. The states with the highest share of equity rich properties in the second quarter were:

• California: 43.5 percent
• Hawaii: 38.3 percent
• Washington: 34.5 percent
• New York: 33.2 percent
• Oregon: 32.8 percent

The cities with the highest share of equity rich properties were:

• San Jose, Calif.: 71.9 percent
• San Francisco: 60.8 percent
• Los Angeles: 47.9 percent
• Seattle: 41.1 percent
• San Diego: 40 percent

  On the other hand, the ATTOM report also showed that more than 5.5 million homes—or 10 percent of all homes with a mortgage in the U.S.—are still considered “seriously underwater,” where the combined estimated balance on the loan is at least 25 percent higher than the property’s estimated market value. “The share of seriously underwater properties has dropped well below 10 percent in bellwether housing markets such as California, Washington, Texas, Colorado, and New York, but the underwater rate remains stubbornly high in markets where price appreciation has not been as strong during the housing recovery of the last six years,” says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president with ATTOM Data Solutions. “Nationwide, the number of equity rich homeowners is more than twice the number of seriously underwater homeowners, but the gap between home equity haves and have-nots persists because home price appreciation is certainly not uniform across local markets or even within local markets.” The states with the highest share of seriously underwater properties in the second quarter were:

• Louisiana: 21.7 percent
• Illinois: 18.5 percent
• Missouri: 17.8 percent
• Mississippi: 16.8 percent
• Ohio: 16.2 percent