Home Equity Buoyed by Rising Home Prices - Nice graphic by RealtyTrac

Mortgage News daily reported that the steady rise in home prices last year has pulled up an estimated 600,000 properties from the category of "deeply underwater" just since May.

Daren Blomquist, Vice President of Realty Trac said that the steadily rising home prices are lifting all boats in this housing market and should spill over into more inventory of home for sale in the coming months. " Home owners who already have ample equity are quickly building on that equity, while the 8.3 million homeowners on the fence with little or no equity are on track to regain enough equity to sell before 2015 if home prices continue to increase at the rate of 1.33 percent per month that they have since bottoming out in March 2012."

Blomquist said that homeowners in foreclosure with some equity have a better chance to avoid foreclosure without resorting to a short sale assuming they don't miss the opportunity to leverage that equity.  "Even homeowners deeply underwater have reason for hope, with about 150,000 each month rising past the 25 percent negative equity milestone - although it will certainly take years rather than months before most of those homeowners have enough equity to sell other than via short sale."

States with the highest percentage of homes with LTVs of 125 percent or higher included Nevada (46 percent), Illinois (40 percent), Florida (40 percent), Michigan (38 percent), Rhode Island (34 percent), and Ohio (31 percent).

Privocorp is a licensed mortgage processor in several states in the US.