A recent article (here) in Fox Business listed 10 cities that are in danger of a housing crash this year. The article caught my eye as I have addressed some of these potential issues that could impact housing in just the past few months. The article references an article last lists 40 cities that could potentially be facing a crisis (here).
According to this article, the top cities are:
1. Newark, NJ
2. Detroit, MI
3. Bridgeport, CT
4. Baltimore, MD
5. Hartford, CT
6. Paterson, NJ
7. Cleveland, OH
8. Fayetteville, NC
9. Dayton, OH
10. Montgomery, AL
The main factor that really stood out for me was the percentage of homes that are still underwater. In December, I wrote a blog about underwater properties and another blog about a potential bubble a few months after that. Take a look at the same list as above but with the percentage of homes that are worth less than what is owed on them.
1. Newark, NJ 27.9%
2. Detroit, MI 34.4%
3. Bridgeport, CT 26.9%
4. Baltimore, MD 26.5%
5. Hartford, CT 22.4%
6. Paterson, NJ 24.7%
7. Cleveland, OH 25.9%
8. Fayetteville, NC 26.8%
9. Dayton, OH 27.5%
10. Montgomery, AL 28.2%
That is a tremendous amount of borrowers in these large cities. Nationwide there are still over 2 Million underwater borrowers. Using the same list, here are some other variables that still exist in large numbers nationwide (if blank, no additional information given). The national average for home vacancy rate is 1.7%. According to CoreLogic today (here) 30-59 day delinquency rate in January 2019 was 1.9%, 60-89 was .7%, 90 or more was 1.4%
1. Newark, NJ 5.2% home vacancy rate, 6.4% delinquency rate
2. Detroit, MI
3. Bridgeport, CT
4. Baltimore, MD 4.4% vacancy rate
5. Hartford, CT 4.3% vacancy rate, delinquency rate is triple national average
6. Paterson, NJ 3.6% delinquency rate
7. Cleveland, OH Second highest foreclosure rate in the study
8. Fayetteville, NC
9. Dayton, OH Median home value has dropped to $52,500
10. Montgomery, AL 1 in every 1772 homes in foreclosure
Kevin Shortle
ProSpeak Productions LLC