…are all in California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona, according to HousingWire.
Drawing from data provided by First American Core Logic, HousingWire has compiled a list of the 20 worst housing markets in the US. Their premise is based on “the most staid of all equations in the mortgage servicing business is this: price declines equal borrower defaults”:
Let the critics say that such a mess of negative equity doesn’t drive defaults. They’ll be proven wrong. Anyone in the servicing trenches knows better, because we’ve seen that borrower equity can cure plenty of ills; we also know that the lack of it leaves a borrower in a tenuous position to manage an economic downturn that, by most accounts, seems likely to hit with a ferocious bite at least through the third quarter of this year.
By their count (and we agree), there’s still enormous pain ahead.
Related links:
Banks foreclose on builders with perfect records – NY Times
Prime mortgages heading south in Southern California – LA Times L.A. Land blog