700,000 us homes no longer underwater

Over 700,000 US homes are no longer underwater, as of the second quarter of 2015.

New data from CoreLogic shows that 759,000 properties regained equity in the second quarter of 2015, bringing the total number of mortgaged residential properties with equity at the end of Q2 2015 to approximately 45.9 million, or 91 percent of all mortgaged properties.

The total number of mortgaged residential properties with negative equity is now at 4.4 million, or 8.7 per cent of all mortgaged properties. This compares to 5.1 million homes, or 10.2 per cent, that had negative equity in Q1 2015. (An underwater home is a home where a borrower owes more on their mortgage than their property is worth.)

"Home price appreciation and foreclosure completions both reduce the number of homeowners with negative equity, the latter because most homeowners who lost homes through foreclosure had some level of negative equity," "Between June 2014 and June 2015, the CoreLogic national Home Price Index (HPI) rose 5.6 per cent and we reported the number of homes completing foreclosure proceedings exceeded one-half million. Both of these factors helped reduce the number of homeowners with negative equity by one million over the year ending in June."

"For much of the country, the negative equity epidemic is lifting," says Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. "The biggest reason for this improvement has been the relentless rise in home prices over the past three years which reflects increasing money flows into housing and a lack of housing stock in many markets. CoreLogic predicts home prices to rise an additional 4.7 per cent over the next year, and if this happens, 800,000 homeowners could regain positive equity by July 2016."