Media coverage of the real estate market has focused so much on the mortgage woes of homeowners over the past five years, you might be excused for believing that only a small minority of homeowners actually, well, own their homes — mortgage-free. But you’d be mistaken, a report released by listing service Zillow suggests.
As of the third quarter of 2012, nearly 30 percent of homeowners, or just about 21 million Americans, were free and clear of a mortgage. Zillow told AOL Real Estate that that rate is 3 percentage points lower than the number of mortgage-free homeowners in 2010, indicating that the country’s debt burden has creeped up over the last 2 years………………………………………..Full Article: Source