“Underwater” Houses Decline in IE

The number of mortgaged residential properties in the Inland Empire with negative equity attached to them declined during 2015, another indication of the local housing industry’s slow but steady improvement.

In all, 92,310 homes – about 11.2 percent of residential properties with a mortgage Riverside and San Bernardino counties – were in negative equity as of the fourth quarter of 2015, a year-over-year drop of 3.6 percent, according to data released by CoreLogic in Irvine.

Another 20,656 – 2.5 percent of all mortgaged properties – were in near-negative equity in the Inland Empire during the last three months of 2015, a drop of 0.3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014, CoreLogic reported.

Negative equity is often called “underwater” or “upside down.” It refers to borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, often because of a decline in home value, an increase in mortgage debt or a combination of the two.

Nationally, 4.3 million residences had negative equity during the fourth quarter of 2015, a 19.1 percent year-over-year drop, according to CoreLogic.