Ohio ranked third in U.S. for ‘undewater’ mortgages

Ohio ranked No. 3 in the nation at the end of last year among states with the highest share of homeowners with mortgages that are seriously underwater, or owe at least 25 percent more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, according to a report Thursday from ATTOM Data Solutions.

The number of seriously underwater Ohio homeowners represented 16.3 percent of all homeowners in the state, ranking just behind Illinois, where 16.6 percent of homeowners were underwater, and Nevada, which took the top spot for seriously underwater homeowners at 19.5 percent, according to the Irvine, Calif.-based real estate data tracker’s report.

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The Dayton metro area fared somewhat better, but not much, despite benefiting from a long-term trend in home price appreciation that pushed the average sales price in the Dayton area to an all-time record of $161,380 in June, and $138,101 in December — a new record for the month, according to the Dayton Area Board of Realtors.

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Still, 20 percent of Dayton-area homeowners were seriously underwater at the end of last year, ranking the local metro No. 4 among the 88 largest metro areas in the country, according to ATTOM.

Including the Dayton area, four of the top five metros with the highest share of seriously underwater homeowners in the fourth quarter of 2016 were in Ohio: Cleveland (21.5 percent); Akron (20.1 percent); and Toldeo (19.9 percent).

The highest percentage of homeowners with serious negative equity were found in Las Vegas, Nev., where 22.7 percent of homeowners were seriously underwater at the end of last year, ATTOM reported.

Nationally, home equity has been steadily rising since negative equity peaked in 2009, driving down the total share of seriously underwater U.S. homeowners to 9.6 percent at the end of last year, which was down from 11.5 percent in the fourth quarter a year earlier, according to ATTOM.

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