Mortgage Delinquency Rates Hit 22-Year Low : Housing: California’s quarterly rate falls below the national one, but some see bad news in that.

Mortgage delinquency rates in the first quarter fell to their lowest level in 22 years nationwide, as lower interest rates made it easier for homeowners to make loan payments, a trade association said Tuesday.

The percentage of California homeowners late in their payments also dropped, falling below the national figure, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. said. However, foreclosures are still higher in California than in the nation overall--a lingering result of the state’s severe recession of recent years.

The national mortgage delinquency rate declined to 3.91% for the quarter, down from 4.15% for the fourth quarter of 1994, the trade group said. California’s seasonally unadjusted rate declined to 3.41% from 4.04%, beating the seasonally unadjusted national figure of 3.62%.

The delinquency figure encompasses a range of people, from those who have missed one mortgage payment to those who are facing foreclosure.

Economists at the trade association attributed the delinquency rate decline to the refinancing boom of 1991-93, when many homeowners renegotiated the terms of their loans to get lower monthly rates. Further, with credit card, automobile and student loan debt at their lowest levels in five years, consumers are better able to make monthly home payments, they said.

“When a person has lower rates than they used to have, chances are good that they can make their payments,” said Deborah Prigal, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. economist who oversaw the survey.

Since interest rates began a new decline in December, banks are likely to see another wave of refinancing, said David Lereah, chief economist at the trade group.

But economists differed as to whether the delinquency rate decline suggests that the economy may improve. Recent reports on jobs, durable goods orders, housing sales and other economic data have suggested a marked slowdown in national economic growth.

Economist Fabian Linden of the Conference Board, a New York-based economic research organization, said he remains optimistic. “Our consumer confidence survey remains very strong,” he said. “We feel reasonably confident that whatever slowdown in the economy we’ve experienced recently will taper off.”

Others noted that the mortgage delinquency rate is a lagging statistic, that is, one that reflects more where the economy has been than where it is headed.

“This statistic reflects the small improvement in the economy in 1994. It’s probably not picking up the recent slowdown in the national economy,” said Bank of America senior economist Howard Roth.

Roth said the California delinquency rate is better than the national one because California emerged from the 1990-1991 recession later that the rest of the country. The national economy has been experiencing job growth for almost four years, Roth said, but job growth in California is more recent, having begun in mid-1993.

The California mortgage delinquency decline is not as encouraging as it may seem, some suggested. The state has a lower overall delinquency rate because the number of homeowners behind with one mortgage payment is lower than for the rest of the country, but the number of Californians behind by 60 or 90 days, or even facing foreclosure, is much higher than the national figure, Prigal said. During the first quarter of this year, 1.29% of all residential loans in California were in foreclosure, whereas the national figure was 0.86%.