Real estate professionals are desperate to find more homes to list. Some homeowners say they’d sell if they could, but their mortgage is still too high. Nearly 3 million homeowners still remain in a negative-equity position in their home.
That translates to about 5.4 percent of all properties with a mortgage that remain in a negative-equity position, in which the owners owe more on the mortgage than their home is currently worth, according to real estate data firm CoreLogic. While fewer homes are in a negative equity than a year ago (when the percentage was 7.1 percent), the percentages still remain elevated.
Home prices have been steadily rising since 2013. Homeowner equity reached $8 trillion in the second quarter of 2017, which is more than double the level five years ago.
The rise in equity is helping homeowners in a “near-negative equity” position get closer to having some equity in their homes. But some homeowners who have eked out some equity still lack enough to move. Close to 710,000 properties have less than 5 percent equity in their homes, CoreLogic reports.
Economists are blaming the still-high negative equity as one main culprit behind why there are so few homes for sale. In August, housing inventory was down more than 6 percent compared to a year ago, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.
The markets with the highest percentage of negative equity on mortgage properties are: Miami (14.7%), Las Vegas (12.2%), Chicago (10.8%), and the Washington, D.C., metro area (7.2%).
Source: “Here’s why Some Homeowners Still Can’t Sell,” CNBC (Sept. 22, 2017)
