Louisiana is among the top five states for the share of homeowners who owe more on their home loans than the market value of the home itself, according to a new report.
Some 14.5% of homeowners in Louisiana are underwater on their properties, or have a combined loan amount on their home that is at least 25% higher than the property’s estimated market value, according to the Year-End 2016 U.S. Home Equity & Underwater Report from ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate and property data firm.
Louisiana trails only Nevada (19.5%), Illinois (16.6%), Ohio (16.3%) and Missouri (14.6%) for its share of underwater homes.
The report is based on publicly recorded mortgage and deed of trust data collected and licensed by ATTOM Data Solutions, along with an industry standard automated valuation model that ATTOM updates monthly.
Nationwide, the trend of underwater homes is going down. As of the end of 2016, there were roughly 5.4 million homes in the U.S. tied to loans worth 25% more than their market value, a drop of more than 1 million properties from the year previous, the report says. The 5.4 million properties represent 9.6% of all U.S. homes with a mortgage, down from 11.5% at the end of 2015.
“Since home prices bottomed out nationwide in the first quarter of 2012, the number of seriously underwater U.S. homeowners has decreased by about 7.1 million, an average decrease of about 1.4 million each year,” says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president with ATTOM Data Solutions, in a prepared statement. “Meanwhile, the number of equity rich homeowners has increased by nearly 4.8 million over the past three years, a rate of about 1.6 million each year.”
Adding insult to injury, New Orleans area homeowners apparently have trouble holding onto their homes. Among 52 metro areas with a population of at least 1 million, New Orleans homeowners had an average homeownership tenure of 4.85 years, second shortest in the nation. The Crescent City trails only Rochester, New York (4.67 years).
