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Chicago and New York City Areas Remain Most Exposed to Potential Downturns in Second Quarter of 2022; Other More-At-Risk Markets Scattered Around Nation; South Region Continues to be Less Vulnerable ATTOM, a leading curator of real estate data nationwide for land and property data, released a Special Housing Risk Report spotlighting county-level housing markets around the United States that are more or less vulnerable to declines, based on home affordability, unemployment and other measures in the second quarter of 2022. The report shows that New Jersey, Illinois and inland California continued to have the highest concentrations of the most-at-risk markets in the second quarter – with the biggest clusters in the New York City and Chicago areas. Southern and midwestern states remained less exposed. The second-quarter patterns – based on gaps in home affordability, underwater mortgages, foreclosures and unemployment – revealed that New Jersey, Illinois and California had 33 of the 50 counties most vulnerable to potential declines. The 50 most at-risk included nine in and around New York City, six in the Chicago metropolitan area, and 13 spread through northern, central and southern California. The rest of the top 50 counties were scattered across the U.S., including three in the Philadelphia, PA, metro area. At the other end of the risk spectrum, the South and Midwest had the highest concentration of markets considered least vulnerable to falling housing markets. “The Federal Reserve has promised to be as aggressive as it needs to be in order to get inflation under control, even if its actions lead to a recession,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM. “Given how little progress has been made reducing inflation so far, the Fed’s actions seem more and more likely to drive the economy into a recession, and some housing markets are going to be more vulnerable than others if that happens.” Counties were considered more or less at risk based on the percentage of homes facing possible foreclosure, the portion with mortgage balances that exceeded estimated property values, the percentage of average local wages required to pay for major home ownership expenses on median-priced single-family homes, and local unemployment rates. The conclusions were drawn from an analysis of the most recent home affordability, equity and foreclosure reports prepared by ATTOM. Unemployment rates came from federal government data. Rankings were based on a combination of those four categories in 575 counties around the United States with sufficient data to analyze in the second quarter of 2022. Counties were ranked in each category, from lowest to highest, with the overall conclusion based on a combination of the four ranks. The ongoing wide disparities in risks throughout the country comes during a time when the U.S. housing market faces headwinds that threaten to slow down or end an 11-year surge in home prices. Sales of both existing and new homes have declined as mortgage rates have almost doubled to 6 percent over the past year, and inflation remains near a 40-year high. However, the most recent risk gaps do not suggest an imminent fall in housing markets anywhere in the nation. Home prices have risen more than 10 percent in most of the country over the past year, with new highs hit in the vast majority of metropolitan-area markets. That has kept homeowner equity and home-seller profits rising. Those numbers have continued to improve as demand, buoyed by increasing household formation by young adults and rising wages has continued to outpace an historically tight supply of properties for sale. Amid that mixed scenario, home affordability is worsening, lender foreclosures on delinquent mortgages are up and the number of home sales is slowing, with local housing markets heading into that uncertain future facing significant differences in risk measures. Most-vulnerable counties clustered in the Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia areas, along with sections of California Thirty-one of the 50 U.S. counties considered most vulnerable in the second quarter of 2022 to housing market troubles (from among 575 counties with enough data to be included in the report) were in the metropolitan areas around Chicago, IL; New York, NY; and Philadelphia, PA, as well as in California. California markets on the list were mostly inland, away from the coast. The top 50 counties included two in New York City (Kings and Richmond counties, which cover Brooklyn and Staten Island), seven in the New York City suburbs (Bergen, Essex, Ocean, Passaic, Sussex and Union counties in New Jersey and Rockland County in New York) and six in the Chicago metropolitan area (Cook, Kane, Kendall, McHenry and Will counties in Illinois and Lake County, IN). The three in the Philadelphia, PA, metro area that were among the top 50 most at-risk in the second quarter were Philadelphia County, along with Camden and Gloucester counties in New Jersey. Elsewhere, California had 13 counties in the top 50 list: Butte County (Chico), Humboldt County (Eureka), Shasta County (Redding) and Solano County (outside Sacramento) in the northern part of the state; Fresno County, Kings County (outside Fresno), Madera County (outside Fresno), Merced County (outside Modesto), San Joaquin County (Stockton) and Tulare County (outside Fresno) in central California, and Kern County (Bakersfield), Riverside County and San Bernardino County in the southern part of the state. Counties most at-risk continue to have higher levels of unaffordable housing, underwater mortgages, foreclosures and unemployment Major home ownership costs (mortgage payments, property taxes and insurance) on median-priced single-family homes consumed more than one-third of average local wages in 35 of the 50 counties that were most vulnerable to market problems in the second quarter of 2022. The highest percentages in those markets were in Kings County (Brooklyn), NY (102.9 percent of average local wages needed for major ownership costs); Riverside County, CA (67.6 percent); Rockland County, NY (outside New York City) (66.2 percent); Richmond County (Staten Island), NY (61.8 percent) and San Joaquin County (Stockton), CA (58.7 percent). Nationwide, major expenses on typical homes sold in the second quarter required 31.5 percent of average local wages. At
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