Loan Default Rates Continue to Increase

chart of loan default rates 1998 to 2009Chart showing loan default rates for real estate, consumer and agricultural loans for 1998 to 2009 by the Curious Cat Investing Economics Blog, Creative Commons Attribution, data from the Federal Reserve.

Default rates on commercial (up another 151 basis points) and residential (93 basis points) real estate continued to increase dramatically in the second quarter. Credit card default rates increased but only by 20 basis points.

Real estate default rates exploded in 2008, in the aftermath of the financial market meltdown. In the 4th quarter of 2007 residential default rates were 3.02% by the 4th quarter of 2008 they were 6.34% and in the 2nd quarter of this year they were 8.84% (582 basis points above the 4th quarter of 2007). Commercial real estate default rates were at 2.74% in the 4th quarter of 2007, 5.43% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 7.91% in the 2nd quarter of 2009 (a 517 basis point increase).

Credit card default rates were much higher than real estate default rates for the last 10 years (the 4-5% range while real estate hovered above or below 2%). Now they are over 200 and 300 basis points bellow residential and commercial default rates respectively. From 4.8% in the 3rd quarter 2008 to 5.66% in the 4th and 6.5% in the 1st quarter of 2009.

Small steps to reduce the large consumer debt have been made recently: consumer debt declined a record $21.5 billion in July. Since April of 2008 consumer debt has been reduced by $70 billion in the USA. Unfortunately we still have $2.47 trillion or
$8,233 for every person (using 300 million as the total population).
Data from the Federal Reserve

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