One-third of Tampa Bay mortgage holders owe more than property is worth

Almost a third of us in the Tampa Bay area owe more on our mortgages than our property is worth. In a measure of how deeply housing values have sunk, real estate consultant First American CoreLogic reports that 183,821 properties in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area have negative equity. That's 31 percent of all properties carrying a mortgage in our region. Another 28,349 mortgages, or 4.8 percent, are close to being "under water," the company said. Negative equity is a greater problem in the Tampa Bay area than it is nationally. About 8.3 million mortgages, or 20 percent, are underwater across the country as a whole. Florida's rate was 30.3 percent, or 1.28 million underwater mortgages.

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