Which States Have the Most Underwater Homes?

2012's second quarter saw another drop in the number of homes experiencing negative equity. CoreLogic published a press release on September 12th, which reported that, "600,000 more borrowers are now above water, for a total of 1.3 million. While that it is truly good news, the U.S. is hardly out of the woods with respect to the housing crisis. While the current total is down 23.7 percent, there are still 2.3 million borrowers in near negative equity. What that means is that they have less than five percent equity in their home.

The most troubled borrowers are in NV. Of all mortgaged properties in the Silver State, 59 percent of them are in a negative equity situation. Following in second place is FL, with 43 percent of its mortgages underwater (find which areas in Florida are appreciating the fastest). Rounding out the top five states with the highest numbers of negative equity borrowers are AZ with 40 percent, GA with 36 percent, and MI with 33 percent. CoreLogic's report noted that these five states are responsible for 34.1 percent of the nation's total number of underwater mortgages.

[Related Post: What's the Difference Between a Short Sale a Foreclosure on PriceAMortgage.com]

It was revealed that most of the underwater mortgages exist in the low end of the market, or homes valued at less than $200,00.00. It was acknowledged that most of these borrowers are continuing to pay their mortgages. In fact, the report showed that among those borrowers, 84.9 percent were current at the close of 2012's second quarter.

Analysts at CoreLogic maintain that if home prices continue to rise, borrowers could soon escape their negative equity situations.

Mortgage Rates Fall to Record Lows Following Federal Reserve Board's Announcement

Fixed mortgage rates fell once again to new record lows according to Freddie Mac's most recent mortgage market survey. According to Freddie's statistics, the 30 year fixed rate average dipped to 3.49% with .6 pts which was down from 3.55% last week. The 15 year fixed rate average also moved lower going from 2.85% down to 2.77% with .6 pts. The 5 year treasury indexed ARM moved in the opposite direction going up from 2.72% to 2.76% with .6 pts.