The share of homeowners who owe more than their house is worth remains above 10% nationwide, according to data from Zillow's second quarter Negative Equity Report.
Zillow said Thursday that 12.1% of homeowners with a mortgage are underwater, which is down from 12.7% in the previous quarter and from 14.4% a year ago.
While on a national basis there is little difference in negative equity rats between cities versus suburbs, the variation is more pronounced based on the region a location is in. In Cleveland and Detroit there were differences of 13.6 and 10.8 percentage points respectively in negative equity rates for those in the suburbs versus those in urban areas, where the rate held steady across both types of areas in Seattle.
Nationwide, In urban areas, 13.7% of homeowners were found to be underwater on their mortgage, as compared with just 11.2% of those in the suburbs.
"At its worst, negative equity touched all kinds of homeowners in all kinds of markets," Zillow chief economist Svenja Gudell said in a news release. "The type of community a given home was in – urban or suburban – mattered little. Fast-forward a few years, and the relative vibrancy of a given community and how it has performed over the past few years, and not necessarily its location in the city or suburbs, matters a great deal."
