One in eight Maryland borrowers were behind on their mortgages this spring, a new report shows, a record caused by job losses and foreclosures feeding on each other in a vicious cycle.
That adds up to about 132,000 homeowners who were at least 30 days late, according to a survey released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association. That's up nearly 60 percent from a year ago and includes people whose lenders were trying to foreclose as of June.
The country fell into recession after homeowners with risky "subprime" loans began defaulting in large numbers two years ago, sending financial institutions into a tailspin. Now, as layoffs mount, many prime borrowers are falling behind on their payments - here and nationwide.
"We went through that first wave of foreclosure, with the subprime loans and other types of exotic products," said Raymond A. Skinner, secretary of Maryland's Department of Housing and Community Development. "Now we're seeing the employment situation and lack of income really hitting hard."
About 90,000 more Marylanders were out of work and looking for jobs in June than was the case a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. Unemployment spiked from 4.3 percent to 7.3 percent.
Maryland's situation isn't nearly as dire as Florida's and Nevada's, states battered by the housing slump. More than 15 percent of borrowers in both states are "seriously delinquent" - at least 90 days behind on their mortgages. In Maryland, it's a little more than 7 percent.
But that's high enough to rank the state 13th in the country for serious delinquencies, despite high average incomes here and an unemployment rate that hasn't climbed as high as the nation's.
The Mortgage Bankers Association counted more than 67,000 prime borrowers - people with good credit when they got their loans - in Maryland who were behind on their payments in the spring. That's just over half of all delinquencies and is up from about 37,000 a year earlier.
The trade group estimates that it tracks 80 percent to 85 percent of mortgages nationwide.
A drastic shift in the delinquency problem is afoot across the country, the mortgage bankers said. The "driver" hasn't merely gone from subprime to prime, said Jay Brinkmann, chief economist for the association. It's gone from subprime adjustable-rate mortgages - particularly risky - to prime fixed-rate, seen as the safest products available.
