Call it “good news Friday,” for a mid-September splash of brighter hues on the demand side of housing’s still-healing supply-and-demand equation. What’s good about it?

For starters, what’s negative is less so. Here’s CoreLogic’s latest look at the portion of the nation’s 50 million homes with mortgage loans that are “under water,” or in negative equity. Homes with negative equity stood at 3.6 million, or 7.1% of all homes with a mortgage; that’s a better-than 13% improvement from the prior quarter, and almost 20% better than a year ago. The headline here is that there are 900,000 fewer of those mortgage holders now than a year earlier who owe a bank more money than their home would fetch if it were sold today.

Read More At Metrostudy →