One-quarter of Seattle’s lower-end homes remain ‘underwater’
Mar 30, 2015, 8:01 AM | Updated: Mar 4, 2016, 5:46 am
Home values rose 6.4 percent in the Seattle area last year but 15.6 percent of all households with at mortgage still owed more than the home’s value, according to the Zillow Negative Equity Report for the fourth quarter of 2014.
In addition, 25.8 percent of low-end homes-homes in the bottom third of the value scale-remained “underwater,” or owing more than the balance of their mortgage.
“Higher negative equity rates have become the new normal,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist.
At the peak of the real estate crisis, more than 15 million homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth, putting them in negative equity. Foreclosures, short sales and rapidly rising home values freed nearly half of those homeowners, but now that trend has reversed in many metros.
Three years into the recovery, home values overall continued to recover while owners of the lowest-valued homes – those most likely to be stuck in negative equity – were left behind.
