Underwater Homeowners “Here To Stay” Zillow Says, from Zero Hedge

Posted on March 21, 2015 | 1 Comment

The rising tide of “recovery” didn’t lift all boats. From zero hedge.com:

A few weeks back we commented on the rather disturbing news that repeat foreclosures jumped in January:

According to Black Knight Financial, both new and repeat foreclosures hit a 12-month high during the first month of the year with repeats (i.e. the borrower was rescued but has since entered the foreclosure process again) jumping 11% M/M. More troubling is the trend in repeat foreclosures which accounted for only 15% of total foreclosures during the crisis but now make up a startling 51%.

Here’s what the trend looks like:

Now, a new report from Zillow seems to offer further evidence that the US housing market may not be the picture of health after all (as if we needed more proof after housing starts cratered 17% in February). The percentage of homeowners underwater in the US was flat from Q3 to Q4 which doesn’t sound all that terrible until you consider that this figure had fallen for 10 consecutive quarters. Things look particularly bad in Florida and the midwest where Zillow notes more than 25% of borrowers are sitting in a negative equity position.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-20/underwater-homeowners-here-stay-zillow-says

To continue reading: Underwater Homeowners “Here To Stay”

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One response to “Underwater Homeowners “Here To Stay” Zillow Says, from Zero Hedge”

  1. neilmdunn's avatar neilmdunn | March 21, 2015 at 3:32 pm | Reply

    I think the 51% repeat foreclosure rate (RFR) is just blowing smoke. Use of %age as an indicator of a trend usually only makes sense if the total #s are comparable; here the total # of foreclosures went from over 200,000 to approximately 100,000. To me the decreasing numbers of one time and total offender are the impressive features. Furthermore, the article stated that a significant portion of foreclosures were in lower income brackets– mixing low income with high income foreclosures to conclude anything is pretty weak. To me the 51% RFR is analogous ( but in the reverse direction) to Obama saying that the decreasing employment rate is a sign of a recovering economy.
    Questions: Why were so many people allowed to be repeat offenders? Were some subprimers? Bad selection criteria?

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