 Almost 8 percent of Texans are behind on their mortgage payments.
That’s slightly better than the national average in a survey to find out how many people are at least a month late paying their home loans during the first quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America said Thursday.
Nationwide, almost 4 percent of U.S. home loans were in foreclosure at the end of March, the mortgage industry group said in a new report.
That’s more than twice Texas’ 1.66 percent foreclosure inventory, according to the study.
“The increase in the foreclosure number is sobering but not unexpected,” Mortgage Bankers Association chief economist Jay Brinkmann said in the report. “The rate of foreclosure starts remained essentially flat for the last three quarters of 2008, and we suspected that the numbers were artificially low due to various state and local moratoria, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac halt on foreclosures and various company-level moratoria.”
With the recession and mounting job losses, many Americans who previously could afford their mortgages are now in trouble.
“The foreclosure rate on prime fixed-rate loans has doubled in the last year, and, for the first time since the rapid growth of subprime lending, prime fixed-rate loans now represent the largest share of new foreclosures,” Brinkmann said.
“More than anything else, this points to the impact of the recession and drops in employment on mortgage defaults.”
In Texas, more than 21 percent of subprime loans are past due.
That compares with a 4 percent statewide prime loan delinquency rate in the first quarter.
At the end of March, 4.27 percent of Texas home loans were more than 90 days behind in payments.
“It does not appear the level of mortgage defaults will begin to fall until after the employment situation begins to improve,” Brinkmann said.
That’s not likely until late 2010, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association forecast.