Owing more than the home is worth
Nearly half the people who bought homes last year in the Baltimore metro area owe more than those properties are worth now, same as the nationwide average, Zillow.com estimates. The company, best known for its "Zestimates" of home values, released the negative-equity numbers today as part of its report on trends in the first quarter of the year.
In the "could be worse" category, here are the 10 metro areas that Zillow believes have the biggest share of '07 buyers with negative equity:
1. Merced, Calif. -- 90.9%
2. Stockton, Calif. -- 90.5%
3. Modesto, Calif. -- 84.6%
4. Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev. -- 82.9%
5. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif. -- 80.9%
6. Madera, Calif. -- 80.3%
7. Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif. -- 78.9%
8. Bakersfield, Calif. -- 77.6%
9. Jackson, Mich. -- 77%
10. Fresno, Calif. -- 75.9%
At the other end: About 9 percent of 2007 buyers have negative equity in Corvallis, Ore., Zillow says.
Interested in other housing-market stats? Click HERE to see the first-quarter report.
Zillow also pinpoints the Baltimore metro area's market peak as summer of 2007 -- judging by price -- and says values have fallen 7 percent since then, back to levels last seen at the end of 2005.
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Comments
To me, the most striking factoid is the median down payment in Baltimore is only 5%, and have been essentially 5% for the last 7 years. Comparing to San Francisco, which has 3 times the home price, the MEDIAN down payment last year was 20%. Guess which area is stretched beyond its means?
Posted by: Sean | May 6, 2008 2:59 PM
Hmm -- the Excel file Zillow sent me shows San Francisco with a median down payment of 14 percent last year, up from 10 percent the previous few years (possibly driven in part by lenders' "declining market" requirements).
Still, that's a lot more than Baltimore's, as you note. The median down payment nationally has been 10 percent in recent years.
Our neighboring metro to the south had a 1 percent median down payment in 2006, Zillow says.
Posted by: Jamie Smith Hopkins | May 6, 2008 3:18 PM
Looking at the graph for the SF area, the average median down payment from 2007-2008 is around 15%, but the last 2 quarters of 2007 and the first quarter of this year, its back to 20%. I find this amazing.
Posted by: Sean | May 6, 2008 3:47 PM
I went to the online version and figured out why we're looking at different numbers: The file I have is annual, while the website breaks it down by quarter.
Down payments are rising quarter by quarter in San Fran. They're not in the Baltimore area. And you know, the difference in price is almost certainly part of the reason. If you have to borrow so much that you're in jumbo-loan territory, you've had to put a lot more down in recent months.
Posted by: Jamie Smith Hopkins | May 6, 2008 4:34 PM