Monday, June 27, 2011

Jumbo Loan Strategic Defaults on the Rise

This family is semi-fictitious but is not alone. Ethics, morality and possible straight-up savvy aside, we started thinking about these "strategic defaulters" as a newly trending consumer segment, as they tend to become a strange new class of renters:
Data being released later today from Experian will show that in the first half of 2010, an estimated 275,000 people just walked away from mortgages they could afford to keep paying because they had become such awful investments. That adds up to roughly 17% of defaulters. While that figure is down 35% from the first half of 2009, as evidence of a double-dip housing crash mounts, "we expect the incidence of strategic defaulting to go up," said Ms. Bremmer.
Estimates of the number of mortgages under water in the U.S. hover just over 1 in 4 but that could jump to half in the coming years. Recent data from Corelogic suggests that almost 10% of mortgages originated just last year are already in the negative equity range. The Federal Reserve shows average homeowner equity at just 38% down from 61% a decade ago. We could go on, but you get the idea. A lot of home owners are hosed.
These are no deadbeats in a traditional sense. The Experian data show that they are more likely to have had a jumbo loan mortgage, have had excellent credit scores, have had more than one house or investment property, and have a higher than average household income. They also stay current on all their other bills. If you look at the incidence in these charts, the proportion of strategic defaulters keeps going up.
They should be owning and spending like home owners. But they're not, and for up to the next seven years they might have a hard time finding a mortgage while their credit recovers. "As many strategic defaulters as there are," said Ms. Bremmer, "there are many more people who are short-selling. Those people are renting, too."

For more great information and to contact the team that created the report please visit Experian Decision Analytics

2 comments:

Rebecca Hall said...

Thank you for sharing such valuable information.

greg said...

It's always interesting to see what damages the boom has done to some people.