Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Mortgage Delinquencies Up Again

Reuters reports 7 percent of mortgages are more than 30 days past due, as reported by Equifax. The article doesn't mention the other credit agencies.

Equifax also reports 39.8 percent of sub-prime mortgage have fallen past due, up 23.7 percent from year.

Whoa, wait a minute: forty percent of sub-primes are delinquent?! And that's up 24 percent from last year? That means one in six sub-primes were delinquent in Q1 '08. How was this not a major problem? Why didn't we hear about it? How could anyone think sixteen percent delinquency was anything but a bad risk? And yet the GSE's, Countrywide, AIG, and the rest of the financial industry were trading derivatives of these loans as AAA investments!

Is anyone asking about this now? In all the talk about financial regulation, what's being done about sub-primes?

Edit: Fixed a spelling error in the title (grr).