by vbindi on July 13, 2010
A smaller percentage of Orange County homeowners were saddled with “underwater mortgages” in the second quarter as more homes entered the foreclosure process even as price declines slowed, real estate website Zillow.com said Monday.
Fewer homeowners with so-called underwater mortgages — where the amount owed on the mortgage exceeds the home’s value — is nevertheless a positive for the housing market as it could portend fewer defaults and foreclosures down the road.
The percentage of American single-family homes with mortgages in negative equity fell to 21.5 percent in the second quarter from 23.3 percent in the first quarter and 23 percent a year ago, according to the Zillow Real Estate Market Reports.
These underwater mortgages are one of the biggest banes of homeowners since negative equity makes many of them unqualified for home loan refinancing and prevents some from selling.
“While fewer homeowners were underwater in the second quarter than the first, it is not yet time to break out the champagne bottle,” Stan Humphries, Zillow chief economist, told Reuters in an interview.
“While some of the downward pressure on negative equity is coming from stabilization in home value trends, the larger factor is the enormous volume of foreclosures occurring within the stock of homes in negative equity,” he said.
Article from MSNBC via Reuters. Written by Julie Haviv
by vbindi on January 3, 2010
Nationwide, homeowners with mortgages of more than $1 million are defaulting at almost twice the U.S. rate. In Orange County CA., the ratio is almost the same, and many of these property owners are turning to Short Sales to unload properties as stock-market losses and pay cuts squeeze wealthy borrowers. Some Orange County upper end homeowners have reached the point where they can’t afford the carrying expenses of a $2 million home.
Nationwide, payments on about 12 percent of mortgages exceeding $1 million were 90 days or more overdue in September, compared with 6.3 percent on loans less than $250,000, according to data from First American CoreLogic Inc. The rate for mortgages above $1 million was 4.7 percent a year earlier. In Orange County, about 16% of mortgages exceeding $1 Mil are 90 days or more delinquent.
Short sales almost tripled to 40,000 in the first six months of 2009 from the same period a year earlier Nationwide, according to data from the Office of Thrift Supervision. In Orange County, there were 2,390 short sale closing in the first 6 months of 2009, compared to just 1,007 for the same period a year before, which represents more than a 100% increase. For the entire year of 2009′, there were 5,414 short sale closings, and 114 of those properties were priced at $1 Million or more.
There are 114,000 home loans of more than $1 million Nationwide, according to First American. About a quarter of all mortgaged homes in the U.S. have loan balances bigger than their current value, known as being upside down or underwater. For more information about short sales in Orange County California, feel free to email us at: Info@ShortSalesASAP.com, or call us at: (949) 254-4775, or visit our website at: www.ShortSalesASAP.com
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