We're Number 10!
March 05, 2009
– Comments (2)
Virginia is # 10 for mortgage holders with negative equity!
Full rundown at Calculated Risk. Check out the chart.
Nearly 20% of mortgage holders have negative equity. 25% are at or near negative equity. Give it another year, and we'll be at 30%, I have little doubt. Washington DC shows a lower score, but I expect that to rise too. If recent studies I've seen are true, and people tend to walk away from houses based more on negative equity than the affordability of their payments, that will mean more foreclosures. The Obama/Knee-jerk Democrat free money giveaway won't accomplish much, and certainly won't put a floor under housing prices, which is what the weathervanes on Capitol Hill want it to do.
Falling house prices will beget more supply and beget falling house prices, until they don't. Virginia, especially northern Virginia, is still way above trend on historical affordability metrics.
If you've got cash, you're going to get your chance in the next couple of years. And you'll get to giggle at all those people who told you that by renting for the past half decade, you weren't "building equity." Find the ones that gave you the most grief at cocktail parties and told you about their 5% down, pick-a-payment financing. Make sure you wave your wads of greenbacks and ask 'em how much they owe on the house.
Sj
RSS Headlines
Fool UK