By DON FENLEY

Tri-Cities homeowner equity declined in the third quarter, and the percentage of mortgages seriously underwater increased.

The number of Tri-Cities mortgages on residential properties that were equity rich declined by 3.6% during the third quarter. At the same time, mortgaged properties that were seriously underwater increased 0.4%. Both were higher than the U.S. year-over-year comparisons cited in ATTOM’s Home Equity & Underwater Report. ATTOM is a leading curator of real estate analytics.

“Over the past year, the share of equity-rich homes has eased slightly while the portion of seriously underwater properties has edged up,” said Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM. “After several years of strong equity growth that peaked in 2022, homeowner equity levels appear to be stabilizing. The modest fluctuations seen over the last few quarters may suggest a housing market that’s finding balance after an extended period of appreciation.”

The decline in equity-rich properties and increase in underwater mortgages came while the number of mortgaged properties in the Tri-Cities increased 1.9% to 86,923.

The percentage of equity rich properties was highest in Elizabethton (60.6%) and the number of underwater mortgages was highest in Abingdon’s 24210 zip code.

Seriously underwater: Loan to value ratio of 125% or above, meaning the property owner owed at least 25% more than the estimated market value of the property.

Equity-rich: Loan to value ratio of 50% or lower, meaning the property owner had at least 50% equity.   

Report methodology 

ATTOM’s Home Equity & Underwater report provides counts of properties based on several categories of equity – or loan to value (LTV) – at the state, metro, county and zip code level, along with the percentage of total properties with a mortgage that each equity category represents. The equity/LTV is calculated based on record-level loan model estimating position and amount of loans secured by a property and a record-level automated valuation model (AVM)

Categories: REAL ESTATE