Palm Beach County outshines nation in reduction of underwater mortgages

Just 16 percent of Palm Beach County homeowners with a mortgage were underwater during the final months of 2014, compared to 16.9 percent of borrowers nationally.

Between October and the end of December, just 16.4 percent of Palm Beach County homeowners with a mortgage owed more on their loan than their home’s value, according to a new report from the Seattle-based housing data firm Zillow.

That’s an 8 percentage-point drop from the same time in 2013. At the market’s low point in 2011, 44 percent of Palm Beach County mortgages were in negative equity.

Nationally, Zillow measured a home value increase of 6 percent in 2014, while Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties saw an increase of 14 percent.

South Florida’s decline in negative equity is also because of more homes completing the foreclosure process, wiping those defaulted mortgages off the books, Humphries said. Still, the nation is at least five years away from getting back to normal negative equity rates of between 2 and 5 percent.


http://realtime.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2015/03/23/palm-beach-county-outshines-nation-in-reduction-of-underwater-mortgages/