The number of Maryland homeowners behind on their mortgage payments jumped a record 70 percent in the past year as a protracted housing slump and months of sharply tightened credit continue to take their toll.
Delinquencies have not hit all-time highs in the state - the share of loans with late payments was larger at the end of the 1990s and in the early part of this decade, because of fraudulent property-flipping schemes in Baltimore.
But housing counselors and Maryland leaders are alarmed by how quickly the mortgage situation has been worsening statewide, despite a low unemployment rate and high household income.
More than 70,000 loans were at least 30 days past-due in the first three months of the year, including those in imminent danger of foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Association estimated yesterday. That's an increase of 70 percent from the first quarter of last year, the largest jump since figures were first kept in 1979.
The numbers come from a survey that covered about eight out of 10 U.S. first-lien loans, the trade group said.
Anne Balcer Norton, director of foreclosure prevention at St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center in Baltimore, said the nonprofit group is getting upward of 90 calls some weeks from homeowners in trouble across the state. It was getting 40 calls or so a week at the beginning of 2007.
Overwhelmed mortgage servicers can't handle the volume, and some believe homeowners are scheming to get help that they don't really need, she said, disputing that viewpoint.
"We're not seeing homeowners that are trying to profit or benefit from this," Norton said. "We're seeing people truly in distress."
The state's HOPE hot line - 877-462-7555 - has received more than 6,000 calls for assistance since being launched a year ago, many of them recently, state housing officials said.
Nationwide, the delinquency rate and the rate of loans entering the foreclosure process both set records in the first three months of the year, according to seasonally adjusted figures from the mortgage bankers. Many of the loans going sour are in California and Florida, big states that have been pummeled by the housing slump.
Maryland ranked 24th nationwide, tied with Delaware for the share of mortgages that were delinquent but not yet in the foreclosure process.
Hoping to stem the rising tide, state legislators passed a law in the session earlier this year requiring lenders to give borrowers more notice of impending foreclosure.
