Mortgage Delinquencies on the Rise in Texas

US Banker | March, 2010

Mortgage delinquencies of 30 days or more rose in half of the nation’s top 100 metropolitan areas in the fourth quarter, according to bank and FDIC data compiled by Foresight Analytics in Oakland, Calif.

Foresight found lingering problems not just in the usual trouble spots, like California and Nevada, but also in Texas, which has largely avoided problems related to the housing crisis. Five markets in the Lone Star State, El Paso, Houston, Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth, ranked in the top 25 in the nation for first-lien, single-family mortgages that were 30 to 89 days past due, and in El Paso and Houston, delinquency rates were above 20 percent. Only Las Vegas, where 21.1 percent of mortgages are past due, had a higher rate of delinquent loans than El Paso and Houston.

Anderson cautioned the numbers don’t portend that Texas will soon be flooded with foreclosures. For one thing, the numbers may be statistically skewed by the presence of large, out-of-state banks in those markets (Foresight’s methodology divides national-bank portfolios by geographical market share, which may not reflect the actual distribution of delinquencies in each bank’s portfolio). But Texas still merits caution: its economy is no longer sustained by high energy prices and job growth is leveling off in Houston and Dallas, the state’s two largest markets.

“Texas is an area we have our eye on,” Anderson said.