Mortgage originations and household debt balances steadily rose in the third quarter, sending overall U.S. household debt to $18.59 trillion, a 1% rise from the previous quarter.
The Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, published Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data, showed “aggregate delinquency rates remained elevated,” with 4.5% of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency.
Across all debt types tracked by the report — including mortgage loans, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), student loans, auto loans and credit cards — serious delinquencies (90 days or more past due) increased to 3.03% from 1.68% in the third quarter of last year.
The share of 90-day delinquent mortgage balances rose to 1.28% from 1.08%, while 90-day delinquent HELOC balances rose to 1.27% from 0.43%. Ninety-day delinquent student loan balances spiked to 14.26% from 0.77% year over year.
Donghoon Lee, an economic research adviser at the New York Fed, commented in a press release that “relatively low mortgage delinquency rates reflect the housing market’s resilience, driven by ample home equity and tight underwriting standards.”
Overall mortgage balances grew by $137 billion in the third quarter and totaled just over $13 trillion by the end of September. HELOC balances rose by $11 billion to $422 billion, while HELOC limits rose by $8 billion.
The volume of mortgage originations during the third quarter also increased, with $512 billion of newly originated mortgages, including purchases and refinances, representing an 11.8% rise from the second quarter’s $458 billion in new originations.
The New York Fed reported that 55,000 individuals had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports in the third quarter, an increase from the previous quarter.
