Home owners underwater - Tomson Burnham LLC

Home owners underwater? I’m not talking about people that have pools in their backyards either…

Home owners in trouble is not a big secret, unless you live in the bat cave. Foreclosures, short sales, buy and bail are all consequences of home owners being underwater.

CNNMoney.com had an interesting article a couple of weeks ago about home owners being underwater. I meant to blog about it a while ago, but other things came up! So now I’m finally getting caught up.

Underwater means that the house is worth less on the market than the seller’s mortgage. Now this doesn’t mean that every underwater house is a short sale or foreclosure. There are many people who are living in their homes, making their payments, and doing just fine. Even though they are underwater, they are doing fine.

These folks, hopefully, won’t have to sell soon because they would have to bring a check to the closing table…Not fun. We are so used to sellers receiving checks at closing, not writing them…

Anyway, the article listed the top states for underwater loans and the bottom states for underwater loans. I don’t think there are any surprises on the top 10 list. Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and California have made the papers for the past few years about their markets. With the difficulties faced by the big 3 auto makers in Michigan, it is no surprise that they are on the list as well.

I personally found those numbers staggering.

As for the bottom 10 (or top 10 with fewest underwater loans)…Oregon was nicely in the bottom 10.

This is pretty indicative with what I see in the marketplace. I have been asked by several potential buyers lately about trying to purchase a foreclosure. As of the writing of this blog, there are 4,991 active residential listings (including acreage properties) on the WVMLS. Only 111 of them are designated as a short sale or foreclosure. That is 2.2%. Not a lot.

Thankfully, Oregon lenders tended to be more conservative in the loan products offered to home buyers than other parts of the country. You can see the results of that with this data and the mild correction of our real estate market.