There is still a substantial mortgage mess from the 2008-2009 financial crisis. From Keith Jurow at marketwatch.com:
Delinquent loans still haunt the housing market
Everett CollectionRemember all those sub-prime mortgages that blew up in 2007 and popped the housing bubble? The widely-held consensus is that millions of them were foreclosed as housing markets cratered. Since then, the remaining ones have been quietly disappearing as markets recovered.
Here is the problem: That is just a fairy tale. The truth is these mortgages are still dangerous and could soon undermine the housing recovery.
Collectively, loans from the bubble period that were not guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac were called non-agency securitized mortgages. Researcher Black Box Logic had an enormous database of non-agency loans until it was sold to Moody’s three years ago. At the peak of the buying madness — November 2007 — its database showed 10.6 million loans outstanding with a total balance of $2.43 trillion.
In 2016, Fitch Ratings first published a spreadsheet showing what percentage of these loans had been delinquent for more than three-, four-, or five years. Here is an updated table showing the 10-worst states and how the number of deadbeat borrowers has soared.
