Although quarterly mortgage debt outstanding ascended, home-secured credit lines contracted. As mortgage originations increased, lenders were more restrictive than a year ago.
Aggregate household indebtedness — including credit cards, student loans and loans secured by automobiles and single-family properties — totaled $13.29 billion in the second quarter.
Consumer debt outstanding expanded 0.6 percent from the first quarter, has increased for 16 consecutive quarters, and now stands at its highest level ever,
The details were reported Tuesday by the federal Reserve Bank of New York in its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit based on data provided by Equifax.
The largest component of household debt is mortgages, which came to $9.00 trillion during the latest three-month period.
The mortgage book was $8.94 trillion in the first quarter and $8.69 trillion as of mid-year 2017.
Delinquency of at least 90 days on mortgages was 1.2
percent, worse than 1.1 percent as of March 31. But an improvement was made since June 30, 2017, when the 90-day rate was 1.5 percent.
Mortgage originations increased to $437 billion from $428 billion in the first quarter. Collective national production was also better than the $421 billion originated in the second-quarter 2017.
Median credit scores on mortgage originations were 760, “roughly unchanged” from the preceding three-month period. But, as home lending has increased, lenders have tightened up — with median scores rising from 754 in the same three months last year.
The aggregate balance of home-equity lines of credit moved in a different direction than mortgages,
falling to $0.432 trillion as of mid-2018 from $0.436 trillion three months previous and $0.452 trillion one year previous. HELOCs have been on a declining trend since 2009.
As the HELOC book shrunk, serious HELOC delinquency worsened — increasing to 1.1 percent from 1.0 percent at the end of the first quarter.
In the second-quarter 2018, there were around 76,000 new foreclosures started, the same as three months earlier and fewer than 85,000 a year earlier.
