Sense on Cents

While the equity market continues its ascent into the heavens, our housing market continues its descent into hell.

How long can these two indicators continue their contradictory movements? It is extremely hard to believe that the price actions and underlying dynamics in these indices can continue for an extended period. While Uncle Sam’s liquidity has been phenomenal in generating support for the equity markets, it has been decidedly less supportive to the housing market.

The Wall Street Journal addresses the ongoing meltdown in the housing and mortgage markets in writing, Mortgage Markets Continued to Falter in 3rd Quarter:

The U.S. housing market continued to deteriorate in the third quarter as even the most credit-worthy borrowers increasingly fell behind on their mortgages, highlighting the problems policy makers have faced in trying to address the problem.

A new report from the Office of Thrift Supervision and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found that the percentage of current and performing mortgages dropped for the sixth consecutive quarter, as foreclosures in process topped 1 million mortgages at the end of September. The report covers roughly 34 million loans totaling $6 trillion in principal balances, or approximately 65% of the U.S. mortgage market.

The regulators said that serious delinquencies, loans that are at least 60 days past due, increased across all loan categories and climbed to 6.2% of the loans in the portfolio during the third quarter. The report said that just 67.7% of option adjustable-rate mortgages were considered current at the end of the third quarter, while 27.9% were either seriously delinquent or in the process of foreclosure. (more…)