By: E. Scott Reckard and Ronald D. White
Source: latimes.com
Widespread joblessness is causing more Americans to fall behind on their house payments, triggering a new round of foreclosures that some analysts fear could delay the nation’s economic recovery.
A mortgage group said Thursday that, more than 13 percent of the nation’s mortgage holders were delinquent on their mortgages or are in the process of having their homes repossessed, in the second quarter of 2009, and this could even get worse. This is the highest figure since tracking began in 1972.
The numbers underscore a worrisome trend. A spate of foreclosures — which began with speculators who walked away from their souring investments, then spread to high-risk borrowers who couldn’t make their payments when their low-interest mortgages reset — is now hitting unemployed homeowners with good credit scores, clean financial histories and conventional home loans.
The U.S. has shed 6.7 million jobs since the recession began, employment losses that have left even high-quality borrowers struggling. One in three new foreclosures from April to June was from a prime, fixed-rate loan, up from 1 in 5 a year earlier.
