Housing Markets most vulnerable to COVID-19

[Ray Johnson]

I thought this was an interesting article, odd that a majority of the properties are on the east coast. .25 Most vulnerable COVID-19 related housing markets Wish I could see more than 25 markets. How is it that some of these markets still have such high percentages of underwater properties in 2020? 

[Wyatt Franta]

Hey Ray,

These are all speculative reasons, but from what I could gather, here are likely possibilities:

• New Jersey's housing market fell into a slump almost a decade ago, and according to Zillow, average property values have just rebounded to 2011 levels. That would insinuate anyone who purchased a property around the peak of 2011 is still underwater. Link here: https://www.zillow.com/nj/home-values/
  New York is in a real estate freefall due to COVID. Anyone who purchased a property within the past year is undoubtedly losing equity with every passing minute this pandemic continues. Thus, increasing "underwater" percentages.
• The percentage of income data seems skewed. I looked into Beaufort County, S.C. and you can buy a turnkey mansion for $300k>. 54% of households making only $3,200-3,400/mo seems incredibly high (I estimated mortgage costs on 300k at 5% down and doubled it). Hell, a full-time couple making the S.C. minimum wage of $10/hr equates out to $3,200/mo. It's infeasible to believe more than half of households are only making minimum wage. I could definitely be wrong there.

Just some surface-level thoughts, but I think the MarketWatch journalists just took recent housing data affected by COVID and slapped it into a blog post for easy internet traffic. We're undoubtedly headed toward a recession, but I don't believe these markets are any more or less vulnerable than most others.