More LI homes were 'underwater' in first quarter

The number of Long Islanders who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth rose in the first three months of the year, according to a report released today.

Of all Island homeowners with mortgages, 8.4 percent, or 45,083, had “negative equity” in their homes in the first quarter of 2012, according to national data provider CoreLogic. That marks a 1.6 percent increase from the same period in 2011, when 6.8 percent of Long Island loans – 35,258 mortgages – were underwater.

In the first three months of the year, the share of Long Island mortgages that were underwater was the highest it had been since mid-2009, which is as far back as CoreLogic can release comparable local figures, according to the data provider.

CoreLogic also released month-by-month data showing that 9 percent of mortgages in Nassau County were underwater in April, a decrease of 0.8 percentage points compared to April 2011. In Suffolk County, 6.8 percent of mortgages were worth more than the underlying homes’ value in April, a 3-percentage-point rise from the same month a year earlier.

Long Island is in better shape than the country as a whole; nationwide, 24 percent of all residential loans – 11.4 million mortgages – were underwater in the first three months of this year, according to CoreLogic.

CoreLogic collects data on 85 percent of all mortgages in the United States.