The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Twenty percent of Bay Area homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, according to a study being released today. This dubious distinction has entered the American lexicon as an all-too-familiar term - being underwater.
It's even worse than you thought:
estimates are "definitely conservative" because they looked only at original purchase mortgages compared with a home's current value. These estimates did not consider cash-out refinances, which have become commonplace and would have made the underwater percentages higher.
We can predict housing prices should be lower in the Bay area next year at this time.
