By Ian McKendry

WASHINGTON (MNI) – The percentage of Americans who owe more on
their homes than the property is worth fell from 25.2% to 23.7% in the
first quarter of 2012, data analytics firm CoreLogic reported Thursday.

“In the first quarter of 2012, rebounding home prices, a healthier
balance of real estate supply and demand, and a slowing share of
distressed sales activity helped to reduce the negative equity share,”
Mark Fleming, CoreLogic’s chief economist said in a statement.

“While the overall stagnating economic recovery will likely slow
housing market recovery in the second half of this year, reducing the
number of underwater households is an important step toward reducing
future mortgage default risk,” Fleming added.

CoreLogic said 11.4 million of all residential properties with a
mortgage were in negative equity in the first quarter of 2012 which was
down from 12.1 million the fourth of 2011. They said an additional 2.3
million had less than 5% equity in their home in the first quarter.

“Although it will still be a slow recovery for U.S. homeowners, we
see this improvement as a stabilizing and positive development for the
mortgage industry,” Anand Nallathambi, CoreLogic president and CEO said.

“Nevada had the highest negative equity percentage with 61 percent
of all mortgaged properties underwater, followed by Florida (45
percent), Arizona (43 percent), Georgia (37 percent) and Michigan (35
percent). These top five states combined have an average negative equity
share of 44.5 percent, while the remaining states have a combined
average negative equity share of 15.9 percent,” the report said.

Revised National Negative Equity

Time Period Neg Equity Neg Equity
Loan Count (mlns) Share

Q1 – 2012 11.4 23.70%
Q4 – 2011 12.1 25.20%
Q3 – 2011 11.4 24.10%
Q2 – 2011 11.5 24.50%
Q1 – 2011 11.5 24.70%
Q4 – 2010 11.7 25.10%
Q3 – 2010 11.4 24.50%
Q2 – 2010 11.5 24.90%
Q1 – 2010 11.9 25.60%
Q4 – 2009 11.9 25.70%
Q3 – 2009 11.1 24.30%

–Source: CoreLogic

** MNI Washington Bureau: 202-371-2121 **

[TOPICS: M$$AG$,M$U$$$,MAUDS$,MTABLE]