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A new list from Forbes ranks the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area as having among the worst homeowner debt, leaning heavily on the percentage of mortgages with a second mortgage or home equity loan.
Now that the market, banks and real estate industry are dealing with the many ripple effects of over-lending risky products to borrowers who mostly shouldn't have been borrowing -- aka the subprime debacle -- attention is turning to another recent phenomenon: saddling a first mortgage with another, smaller one.
The magazine says 26 percent of mortgages in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area have a second mortgage or home equity loan, putting it No. 13 in the country. You can find the whole Forbes story here.
Problem arise when a home saddled with two loans begins to lose value and can't be sold or refinanced, because the house is worth less than the combined loans. Anyone concerned about such scenarios in Pierce County?
