NJ HELOC Heaven: How are we doing?

Here are some maps from Zillow - they are for the Atlantic City, NJ area and the NY Metro area. While we can not see how things are for the entire state these various snapshots put together we can see the areas where most of the problems currently are and will soon be. Unfortunately the NY Metro map does not show any data for Bergen County - this is a large, highly populated county just outside of Manhattan.

First we will take a look at Home Value change maps - this will let us know how much home prices have went down. The darker the Blue the bigger the drop. Overall both of these maps show significant declines in the state. In the Metro area there were two two that had significant increases over 6% - but the declining communities far outweighed the increasing ones. One final note, the Atlantic City area map has only declines while the NY Metro map also has areas of rising home values so look closely.

First Atlantic City Area which ranges from down less than 2% to down more than 11%

Now NY Metro Area which ranges from up more than 6% to down more than 7%.

The next set of maps represent the areas of negative equity in our state. Once again in these maps the darker red illustrates the areas that have a higher percentage of homeowners with negative equity. Negative equity provides numerous problems and the higher percentages the more things will compound. With one has negative equity they can not refinance and are more likely to face foreclosure or walk away. The majority probably bought with little or no money down, but from the maps above there were probably numerous buyers who put in a significant investment that is now gone. In the Atlantic City area there are numerous towns with more than 40% of recent home-buyers having negative equity. The NY Metro map does not look much better.

Here is the Atlantic City negative equity map. This ranges are from negative 40% to less than 17%.