10 Cities with Lowest Rates of Home Equity


Despite generally rising home prices, home equity continues to fall in many cites hardest hit by the unraveling of the real estate market.

Equity continues to drop because of resetting mortgage rates, job losses, and high rates of foreclosure depressing home prices further.

Using information from credit reporting service Equifax, Forbes magazine measured the percentage of home equity relative to a home’s current value in the country’s 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas.

It determined that these are the 10 areas with the lowest average percentage of home equity:

1. Modesto, Calif.
2. Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.
3. Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, Ariz.
4. Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev.
5. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, Calif.
6. Stockton, Calif.
7. Merced, Calif.
8. Reno-Sparks, Nev.
9. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif.
10. Anchorage, Alaska

Source: Forbes, Tim Kiladze (05/06/2010)

Art Oswald

www.title-ed.com

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When Mortgage Relief Is a Band-Aid

BY JAMES R. HAGERTY AND RUTH SIMON

After months of negotiations, Wells Fargo & Co. agreed in February to reduce Cynthia Mason’s mortgage payments by about $300 a month.

But the 49-year-old resident of Volente, Texas, a former school secretary who is unemployed and battling cancer, says her income still falls short of what she needs for medical and legal bills, health insurance, credit cards, a car loan—and the mortgage.

“I think the whole process is a sham,” Ms. Mason said, angry that the San Francisco bank didn’t do more to help reduce her debt load. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman declined to comment on her situation.

As …

It’s not just the house loan that is taking a toll on borrowers, but the car loans, credit card balances and college loans. Typical homeowners getting loan relief under the President’s initiatives spent 44.8 percent of their pretax income on housing prior to loan modification, but when other monthly debt payments were added they were spending 77.5 percent of pretax income.

After loan modification, consumers were spending 31 percent of their monthly pretax income on housing, but still a combined 61.3 percent of income on debt payments.

Ted C. Jones, PhD

Posted via web from Title Insurance
Continuing Ed for Title Agents

Home prices could sink without tax credit – USATODAY.com

prices are widely expected to fall now that a tax credit for home buyers has expired.

That’s raising concern about a possible double dip in home prices.

National housing prices stopped falling early last year and rose 0.3% over the 12 months ending in February, according to a study by real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

The firm predicts prices will fall this year before starting to rise again in late 2010. Even so, next February’s prices are likely to be 4.2% lower, it forecasts.

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Continuing Ed for Title Agents

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