The rich get richer?  When it comes to equity that appears to be the case according to information released by RealtyTrac on Thursday. The company's U.S. Home Equity & Underwater Report shows an increase in the number of "equity-rich" properties, those with at least 50 percent equity rose by over a million between the second quarters of 2014 and 2015.

At the end of the most recent period there were an estimated 10.9 million properties considered equity rich, approximately 19.6 percent of all properties with a mortgages, compared to 9.9 million or 18.9 percent at the end of Q2 2014.  The latest number is lower than both of the previous quarters; there were 11.1 million such properties 19.8 percent) at the end of the first quarter and 11.3 million or 20.3 percent in Q4 2014.     

Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, does not view the two quarter slide, which was also reflected in a downturn in numbers of properties with lesser amounts of positive equity, as necessarily bad news.  "Although the number of equity rich homeowners with a mortgage has increased by 1 million compared to a year ago, that number dropped by nearly 300,000 between the end of 2014 and the middle of 2015," he said. "The number of homeowners with a mortgage who have at least 20 percent equity has dropped by more than 900,000 during the past six months, indicating that homeowners who have gained substantial equity thanks to the housing price recovery over the past three years are taking advantage of that newfound equity. Some are leveraging that equity into a higher LTV refinance or a move-up purchase, some may be downsizing into an all-cash purchase and some may be cashing out of homeownership altogether. Those homeowners cashing out of homeownership altogether would explain why the nation's overall homeownership rate continued to decline in the second quarter even as homeownership rates among millennials increased."

Equity rich properties were located primarily in communities that have seen strong price growth on top of prices already above the national average.  San Jose saw by far the greatest growth in numbers of equity-rich properties, up 43.8 percent followed by neighboring San Francisco at 38.3 percent.  Other communities high on the list are Honolulu (36.7 percent), Los Angeles (32 percent), and New York (30.7 percent).

Despite higher home prices negative equity continues to exist as a significant problem.  RealtyTrac said that at the end of the second quarter there were 7,443,580 properties that were seriously underwater - with mortgage balances at least 25 percent higher than the property's estimated value.  This is 13.3 percent of all mortgaged properties.  This was an increase from the 7,341,922 (13.2) percent of seriously negative situations in the previous quarter but significantly lower than the just over 9 million underwater homes in the second quarter 0f 2014, 17.2 percent.  The most recent quarter was the second consecutive one in which the number of underwater properties slightly increased. The number and share of seriously underwater homes peaked in the second quarter of 2012 at 12.8 million seriously underwater homes representing 28.6 percent of all homes with a mortgage.

The share of distressed properties - those in some stage of the foreclosure process - that were seriously underwater at the end of the second quarter was 34.4 percent, down from 35.1 percent in the first quarter of 2015 and down from 43.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014 to the lowest level since RealtyTrac started following the number in the first quarter of 2012. Conversely, the share of foreclosures with positive equity increased to 42.4 percent in the second quarter, compared to 42.1 percent in the first quarter and 34.1 percent a year earlier.

 "Slowing home price appreciation in 2015 has resulted in the share of seriously underwater properties plateauing at about 13 percent of all properties with a mortgage," Blomquist said.  "However, the share of homeowners with the double-whammy of seriously underwater properties that are also in foreclosure is continuing to decrease and is now at the lowest level we've seen since we began tracking that metric in the first quarter of 2012."

Markets with a population greater than 500,000 with the highest percentage of seriously underwater properties in Q2 2015 were primarily those at the lower end of the spectrum for both home values and post-crash appreciation.  Lakeland, Florida led at 28.5 percent, only slightly higher than Cleveland at 28.2 percent. Others with more than a quarter of its properties in negative equity include Las Vegas, Akron, and Orlando.

 Markets where the share of distressed properties -  those in some stage of foreclosure -  that were  seriously underwater exceeded 50 percent in the first quarter of 2015 included Las Vegas, Lakeland, Cleveland, Chicago, Tampa, Palm Bay, Florida; and Orlando.

Not surprisingly RealtyTrac found that the largest share of seriously underwater homes, 38 percent, have been owned for seven to 11 years.  This puts their purchase data squarely into the real estate boom years preceding the housing collapse.