Monday, July 28, 2008

Subprime improving


The ABX credit data is showing that the rate of increase of 60+ delinquency for 2006 mortgages is clearly slowing. It has been doing so for several months. The worse the pool of mortgages the faster the improvement.

This is also true of other mortgage pools I am looking at – though some 2007 pools are continuing to deteriorate.

Companies that wrote lots of their business in 2006 might now be seeing light at the end of the tunnel. For companies that wrote lots of business in 2007 that light might be an oncoming train.

This is relevant to the underlying books of the bond insurers and others.

I am wondering whether this trend applies to mortgages generally - as some bond insurers stopped writing earlier than others - and some mortgage insurers ramped up their business in 2007 to take advantage of the "opportunities" as competitors left the market.

If anyone has been looking at this sort of data in detail - I would love you to share it with me.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

isnt this too soon though?jump the employment rate to 7% and I want to see if these upticks will last

John Hempton said...

Not sure. The economy is getting worse and the short-end delinquency (30 plus) is actually falling. Very encouraging.

Only applies to 06 and 05 pools.

J

Matthew Dinneen said...

Mortgage resets are increasing into mid 2009, I believe. These are most likely later vintage and lower quality issues.

How can you hope for a bottom in delinquency if what's about to hit the fan is greater in quantity and lower in quality than what has hit up until this point?

Great data point though - thanks for keeping it interesting as always.

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