Subprime Borrowers Fall Behind on Mortgage Payments

June 14, 2007 — -- If you live in a Rust Belt state, get ready for more bad economic news. On top of disappearing manufacturing jobs, home ownership is now quickly evaporating.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan accounted for nearly one of every five U.S. homes in foreclosure during the first three months of 2007. Ohio had the highest level of properties in foreclosure for a large state since the Washington-based trade group started its quarterly National Delinquency Survey in 1972.

"The percentage of loans in foreclosure would be well below the average of the last 10 years were it not for Ohio, Michigan and Indiana," said Doug Duncan, chief economist with the association.

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The news came in the Thursday release of MBA's survey for the first three months of this year. It found that nationwide, 4.84 percent of mortgage loans were more than 30 days delinquent.

While that was a decrease from the previous quarter, it was higher compared with a year earlier when the rate stood at 4.41 percent.

And if you have a subprime loan, the news was definitely not good. The bulk of homeowners who were late making their monthly payments had subprime mortgages, usually provided to customers with poor or risky credit histories.

For all subprime loans, 13.77 percent were delinquent, and 15.75 percent of subprime adjustable rate mortgages were late -- the highest rate on record.

Foreclosures rose as well in the first quarter of the year. Nationwide, the rate increased to 1.28 percent from 1.19 percent in the last quarter of 2006.

Again, subprime borrowers were more likely to be in some stage of foreclosure, as 5.1 percent of subprime loans were in foreclosure.

Perhaps even more troubling, the rate of properties entering into foreclosure jumped significantly for borrowers holding subprime ARMs. From January to March, 3.23 percent of these homeowners couldn't keep up with the monthly payments, and their homes entered foreclosure. That's up from a rate of 2.7 percent for the last three months of 2006.