Underwater homes are surfacing in Miami-Dade: report

As the national housing market continues its recovery, fewer homeowners in Miami-Dade County are reporting underwater mortgages.

A new report from CoreLogic states home values in the United States have been rapidly increasing, which has helped alleviate the large numbers of underwater homes throughout the country.

Underwater homes are defined as properties where a mortgage is worth more than the home it’s secured by, as a result of either declining property values or a growth in debt (or a mix of both).

In Miami-Dade, a total of 102,822 homes were underwater as of 2015’s second quarter. That represents 23.2 percent of all residential properties in the county. Despite accounting for nearly a quarter of all homes here, that figure has decreased by 5.5 percent compared to the same period last year.

Anand Nallathambi of CoreLogic

On top of that, the number of homes on the verge of sinking has decreased by 856 year-over-year. In the second quarter of 2015, a total of 12,390 homes were close to going under, compared to 13,247 in the second quarter of 2014.

“For much of the country, the negative equity epidemic is lifting. The biggest reason for this improvement has been the relentless rise in home prices over the past three years which reflects increasing money flows into housing and a lack of housing stock in many markets,” Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic, wrote in the report. “CoreLogic predicts home prices to rise an additional 4.7 percent over the next year, and if this happens, 800,000 homeowners could regain positive equity by July 2016.”