More Long Islanders underwater on mortgages
CoreLogic reports that more Long Islanders owned more on their mortgages that their homes were worth this spring, than in the same period a year earlier. Credit: iStock
More Long Islanders were “underwater” on their mortgages this spring than the previous spring, CoreLogic reported Wednesday.
In Nassau and Suffolk counties, 48,546 homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth during the second quarter. That added up to 9 percent of all homeowners with mortgages, compared to 8.4 percent during the second quarter of 2011, according to the data provider.
The rise in troubled mortgages on the Island came even as fewer homeowners nationwide were "underwater" on their home loans. Across the U.S., 10.8 million homeowners -- or 22.3 percent of all homeowners with mortgages -- owed more than their homes’ value from April through June, down from 23.7 during the same time last year, CoreLogic reported.
CoreLogic predicted that nationally, the number of homeowners in “negative equity,” or owing more than their homes’ value, would continue to fall.
If home prices increase by 5 percent, nearly 2 million distressed homeowners would find their homes’ value climbing higher than their mortgage balance, said Anand Nallathambi, president and chief executive of CoreLogic, which collects information on 85 percent of the nation’s mortgages.
“We currently expect home prices to continue to trend up in August,” Nallathambi said in a news release. “Were this trend to be sustained we could see significant reductions in the number of borrowers in negative equity by next year.”
Long Island homeowners have been whipsawed by real estate news, with some data providers reporting signs of trouble in the housing market while others show home prices rising.
Tuesday, the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island reported that the median home price was up 4.8 percent in Nassau County and 0.7 percent in Suffolk County last month, compared to the same period in 2011.
