An excel spreadsheet released from a recent briefing by Mark Zandi and Robert Shiller is making the rounds within the blogosphere. It provides a useful compilation of the underwater equity statistics in the country. In a nutshell here are the observations:

19%, or 14.748 million of the 77.570 million US households, are in negative equity

30.6% of the 48.243 million of homeowners with first mortgages are in negative equity

21.8% of the 67.578 million in owner-occupied single family homes are in negative equity

4.133 million of the 14.748 million of underwater homeowners are underwater by 50%+, meaning the owe more than 50% more than their homes are worth Of the 50%+ underwater category, the worst states are California (672K), Florida (423K), and Texas (344K)

Total Negative Equity in the US is currently estimated at $771.1 billion California mortgages have $234 billion in negative equity, Florida mortgages have $79 billion in negative equity, Texas mortgages have $48 billion in negative equity



$2.4 trillion in total mortgage debt is impaired due to negative equity

How Mark Zandi, who prepared this spreadsheet according to the meta data, could look at this data and come up with his recent paper in collaboration with Blinder, claiming that the recession is over, is simply beyond rationalization.

Some of the key data in chart format:

Total and relative mortgages in negative equity:

Underwater mortgages as a % of all owner occupied households:

Total negative equity by state:

Underwater homeowners as a % of owner occupied households: 50%+ and Total

Those who wish to obtain the source Mark Zandi excel should write to the usual place.