Tag Archives: Negative Equity

Over the course of last year, nearly 2 million homeowners were released from negative equity, Zillow reported Thursday. Data from Zillow revealed 1.9 million homeowners came out of negative equity due to two main reasons: the continuation of high foreclosure rates and rising home values, which increased by 5.9 percent year-over-year, according to the Zillow Home Value Index.

As of November 2012, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have refinanced more than 2 million loans through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported Tuesday. According to FHFA, nearly 130,000 homeowners refinanced their mortgages through HARP in November alone, making it the second biggest month for HARP activity in 2012 (behind June's 137,000 HARP refinances). In addition, HARP volume represented 23 percent of total refinance volume in November.

In a recent blog post from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, three Fed researchers shared their findings on mortgages that would have been targeted by a controversial use of eminent domain proposed in San Bernardino County. Although the researchers found only 11 percent of the open loans in the county were not underwater, they also reported a dramatic decrease in payments and an increase in home values.

While the national delinquency rate remains elevated and even increased slightly month-over-month in December, the delinquency rate ended the year 32 percent lower than the January 2010 peak, according to the December Mortgage Monitor report from Lender Processing Services (LPS). Compared to January 2012, when about 15.5 million loans were in negative equity, the number of underwater borrowers has decreased to 9.8 million, which represents a 35 percent decline.

As home prices increase, more borrowers are rising out of negative equity. Recent data from CoreLogic revealed about 100,000 borrowers moved out of negative equity during the third quarter of 2012, bringing the total number of homeowners who transitioned from negative to positive territory in 2012 to 1.4 million so far.

RE/MAX co-founder and chairman Dave Liniger says he expects the national housing market's rebound in 2012 to not only continue into 2013, but he also thinks the year could be the best the industry has seen in a very long time. Liniger also offered his top 10 predictions for the year in a video presentation. According to the RE/MAX research team, Liniger's predictions for 2012 were 85 percent accurate.

In a report released Monday, ForeclosureRadar boldly asserts that foreclosures are helping mend the market in California, and the government--backed by the banking industry--has created foreclosure delays to help bank balance sheets. ForeclosureRadar argues ""the real problem continues to be the negative equity created during a massive and unsustainable credit bubble,"" not foreclosures, which are helping homeowners ""escape a prison of debt.""

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston recently conducted a study to clarify the effect of mortgage payment size on likelihood of default, and the researchers concluded ""interest rate changes dramatically affect repayment behavior."" Researchers compared homeowner payment behavior both before and after payment reductions and compared them to similar loans that did not receive simultaneous reductions. According to the findings, a payment reduction of about 2 percentage points results in a 50 percent decline in default probability.

Year-to-date, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have refinanced nearly 800,000 loans through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported Thursday. Since HARP's 2009 inception, the program has refinanced 1.8 million loans, with 790,619 of those loans refinanced in 2012 as of October. In October alone, more than 81,613 homeowners were refinanced through the program. Underwater loans continued to find relief through the program, with a little less than half of the loans refinanced in October in negative equity.

Home values still rose into November, marking more than a year of monthly price gains, while national rents fell flat, according to data from Zillow. On a monthly basis, home values inched up by 0.6 percent from October, with the Zillow Home Value Index at $156,200 for November. For 13 straight months now, prices have displayed monthly gains. As home values rose, national rents averaged a slight 0.1 percent month-over-month drop, falling to a value of $1,278 in November, according to the Zillow Rent Index. Over a one-year period, rents still increased by 4.5 percent.