12 States Where Homeowners Are Drowning In Negative Equity

In the first quarter of 2013, 9.7 million or 19.8% of all residential properties with a mortgage were still in negative equity, according to CoreLogic's latest negative equity report.

Homeowners are in negative equity when they owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth.

This is down from 10.5 million or 21.7% of all residential properties at the end of Q4 2012.

Higher home prices helped lift 850,000 mortgage borrowers out of negative equity. But a large part of the country is still deep underwater.

Using CoreLogic data, we ranked the 12 states that had the most underwater mortgages as a percentage of all mortgages. The five states with the highest negative equity accounted for 32.8% of negative equity in the U.S.

Note: Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio is a measure used by financial institutions to gauge risk before approving a mortgage. The higher the LTV ratio, the higher the risk and the more expensive the loan.