by Calculated Risk on 8/19/2010 01:02:00 PM

The Census Bureau released a number of tables from the 2009 American Housing Survey today (report to be released in October).

The survey showed:

76.4 million owner occupied housing units in 2009.

24.2 million were owned free and clear (no mortgage). That is 31.7%.

26.8 million primary mortgages were originated in 2004 or earlier.

12.7 million primary mortgages were originated prior to 2000.

24.1 million primary mortgage had interest rates above 6%.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the number of primary mortgages by interest rate.

Only 6.2 million of primary mortgages were under 5% (as of 2009). This will increase in 2010, but quite a few homeowners had primary mortgage interest rates above 6%. And the BEA recently reported that the effective rate on all mortgages was still above 6% in Q2.

Of course many of these homeowners have second mortgages, or they can't qualify to refinance because or low property values or insufficient income.

It must be very frustrating for these homeowners when they see that Freddie Mac is reporting, via MarketWatch: Fixed-rate mortgages break record low

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.42% for the week ending Aug. 19, a record low since Freddie started tracking the rate in 1971.

There were at least 10.9 million homeowners with 2nd mortgages and another 800 thousand the 3 or more mortgages. Unfortunately that data includes another 5 million homeowners with the number of mortgages not reported.

There is much more data in the tables.