Honolulu Tops For Mortgage Debt
The high cost of housing “helps explain why it’s the most maxed-out metro for housing debt” among the 100 most populous metro areas.
Yet one more indicator of just how expensive it is to live in Honolulu.
A LawnStarter analysis (it’s a company concerned about, well, lawns) of recent Census data shows “nearly 23 percent of mortgaged owner-occupied homes in the Honolulu metro area had a second mortgage or a home equity loan in 2015.”
That leads to Honolulu getting top ranking for housing debt among the top 100 metros.
According to the analysis, Honolulu has 112,055 owner-occupier homes with mortgages. Mortgaged owner-occupied homes with a second mortgage or home equity loans total 25,668.
The percentage of mortgaged owner-occupied homes with second mortgage or home equity loan is 22.91 percent.
No wonder: In the Honolulu metro area, the median sale price of an existing single-family home was $745,300, just behind San Jose and San Francisco, Calif., respectively.
The national median sale price, meanwhile, was $249,000.
Hawaii also has the third0highest average mortgage debt in the U.S. — $262,825 — placing the state behind only the District of Columbia and California.
“Hawaii’s mortgage debt is 60 percent higher than the national average,” says a report.
The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk area in Connecticut is the next most maxed-our area for housing debt, followed by Madison, Wisconsin.
Of note: The LawnStarter analysis includes a photo of cans of Spam, apparently at a Honolulu grocery store, with this caption: “Steep grocery prices contribute to the high cost of living in Honolulu.”
