The slump in house prices over the last 18 months has raised the spectre of some home owners falling into negative equity. A home owner's equity is the amount of money they would be left with after they had paid off their mortgage. If the value of a home increases, that will increase the value of the owner's equity. The first step in that equation is working out how many homes are likely to be worth less now than they were when their owners purchased them. So there's potentially 136,609 homes that are now worth less than their owners paid of them.

Source: New Zealand Herald May 22, 2023 17:05 UTC