As the nation’s book of mortgages grew, home lenders improved their equity position on a year-over-year basis. Negative equity diminished.
At the end of last year, there were 51,209,000 U.S. residential loans outstanding with an aggregate unpaid principal balance of $9.320 trillion.
Outstanding mortgages grew from 51,078,000 loans for $9.249 trillion three months earlier and 50,599,000 loans for $9.062 trillion a year earlier.
CoreLogic Inc. reported the numbers in its Equity Report Fourth Quarter 2016.
The average U.S. loan-to-value
ratio was 55.5 percent as of the most-recent date. Lenders’ equity positions were no different than as of the third quarter but improved from the final quarter of 2015, when the average LTV ratio was 57.6 percent.
“Average home equity rose by $13,700 for U.S. homeowners during 2016,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Dr. Frank Nothaft said in the report. “The equity build-up has been supported by home-price growth and paydown of principal.”
In Hawaii, the average LTV ratio as of the fourth-quarter 2016 was 42.9 percent — lower than any other state. Next was 45.3 percent in New Mexico, then 48.2 percent in California, 51.4 percent in Maryland and 51.7 percent in Washington.
The state in the worst shape was Arizona, where the average LTV ratio was 68.5 percent.
After that was 67.5 percent in Oklahoma, then North Carolina’s 67.1 percent, Ohio’s 66.2 percent and North Dakota’s 66.0 percent.
CoreLogic said that there were 3.17 million U.S. loans with LTV ratios in excess of 100 percent as of the last quarter of 2016. The total was down 1 million from the end of 2015.
The amount of negative equity was $0.283 trillion as of the most-recent three-month period.
With 98.4 of homes in Texas having positive equity, the Lone Star State had the biggest share.
In Nevada, 13.6 percent of borrowers were upside down, the biggest share of negative equity of any state.
