Underwater Homes Gasp a Little Air

Underwater mortgages are the bugaboo of troubled homeowners. The more underwater their homes are -- in other words, the more negative equity they hold in their homes -- the better the chances are that homeowners will lose them. Therefore it should come as good news that only 10.8 million homes, or 22.5 percent of all residential properties, held negative equity at the end of the third quarter of 2010, according to First American CoreLogic.