Can We Discuss Being Underwater In Your House?

Can we discuss being underwater in your house?

Underwater is fun in your swimming pool, diving around. NOT FUN in your house being upside down, or underwater, where what you OWE on your loan is MORE than what the house is worth. NEGATIVE EQUITY !! You feel like you are drowning.

New second quarter numbers out of researchers CoreLogic showed some "improvement" in my North Texas area of rates of houses with negative equity situations.

Dallas ws 14% of homes and Ft. Worth was 13.5% of homes, the whole DFW area IMPROVING from a year ago at 30.45%. The state of Texas comes in at 11.3%.

What about your area? Why do you need to care about this if you ARE STILL ABOVE WATER? Negative equity drives foreclosures and impedes the market recovery. Those areas with the highest negative equity have the biggest problem with foreclosures and getting housing back on track. Nationwide nearly 5 million borrowers are in severe negative equity situation. The reports say they owe a STAGGERING $766 billion more than their houses are worth. What areas are doing the worst and doing the best? Top five in each category:

WORST

• Nevada     68.7%
• Arizona     50.0%
• Florida      45.4%
• Michigan   38.0%
• California  32.8%

BEST

• Oklahoma       5.8%
• New York        7.1%
• Pennsylvania  7.3%
• North Dakota  7.4%
• Montana         7.7%

More than the raw numbers, look at the trends and see if your area is improving. A sign of getting out of the woods.