Falling home prices at the turn of the year pushed more borrowers into a negative equity position, meaning they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

In Q4, 23 percent of borrowers nationwide, or 11.1 million, were holding “underwater” mortgages; that’s a collective $750 billion of negative equity, according to the latest survey from CoreLogic [ CLGX 18.14  +0.19 (+1.06%) ]. That’s up from 22.5 percent, or 10.8 million, in Q3, again, thanks to falling home prices. To make matters worse, 2.4 million borrowers have less than 5 percent equity in their homes, deemed as “near-negative” equity.

Of course negative equity is concentrated in the hardest hit states: Nevada (65 percent), Arizona (51 percent), Florida (47 percent), Michigan (36 percent) and California (32 percent). This as the consensus among housing watchers is that home prices will fall another 5 to 10 percent this year before slowly climbing back. That means negative equity will climb another ten percentage points.

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