Roughly one-quarter, or 26.5 percent, of the 54.7 million mortgaged homes in the U.S. were equity-rich in Q1 2020, according to Attom Data Solutions’ Q1 2020 U.S. Home Equity & Underwater Report. That number decreased only slightly from the 26.7 percent of homes equity-rich during the fourth quarter of 2019.

Per Attom, properties considered equity-rich are properties under which the combined estimated amount of loans secured by those properties was 50 percent or less of their estimated market value.

Conversely, only 6.6 percent of mortgaged properties — about 3.6 million — were considered seriously underwater in the first quarter, or had a combined estimated balance of loans secured by the property at least 25 percent more than the property’s estimated market value.

Although this data makes the market look relatively sunny, these figures were the last of data recorded prior to the coronavirus pandemic’s outbreak across the U.S., which went on to wreak havoc on the economy.

“Homeowners’ balance sheets generally remained strong in the first quarter of 2020 across the U.S., with about the same levels of equity-rich or seriously underwater mortgages as in the prior quarter,” Todd Teta, chief product officer with Attom Data Solutions, said in a statement.

“In the latest marker of the ongoing housing market boom, mortgage payers were four times as likely to have homes worth considerably more than what they owed on their loans than considerably less,” Teta added. “But as with other rosy first-quarter reports, this one needs to be taken in the context of the looming impact of the coronavirus pandemic. With potential for home values to fall, there is a significant chance that equity levels could drop over the coming months while underwater levels rise.”

The Northeast and West produced the greatest number of equity-rich properties, with the top 10 states containing the highest share of these properties residing in these regions. California had the greatest share of equity-rich properties at 42.3 percent, followed by Hawaii (39.0 percent), Vermont (38.2 percent), Washington (36.6 percent) and Oregon (34.0 percent).

The metro areas with the greatest proportion of seriously underwater mortgages included Youngstown, Ohio (17.0 percent); Baton Rouge, Louisiana (16.4 percent); Scranton, Pennsylvania (14.5 percent); Toledo, Ohio (14.3 percent); and Cleveland, Ohio (13.7 percent).

Out of the 8,248 U.S. zip codes with at least 2,000 properties with mortgages in the first quarter, in 157 of those zip codes at least one quarter of all properties with a mortgage were seriously underwater. Most of those zip codes were located in Cleveland, Ohio; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; St. Louis, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; and Rockford, Illinois metro areas.

Email Lillian Dickerson

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