Late Mortgage Payments Up in 1st Quarter

The number of homeowners behind in their mortgage payments increased again in the January-March quarter and could continue to climb through 1997, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. said. The industry group said the seasonally adjusted delinquency rate on one- to four-unit homes was 4.36%, up from 4.32% in the October-December quarter, when overdue payments rose 0.12 percentage point. The back-to-back advances followed two quarterly declines but remained 0.11 percentage point below the recent high of 4.47% in the first three months of 1996. In the West, the rate jumped 0.14 percentage point to 3.77%; 0.13 point in the Northeast, to 4.34%; and 0.04 point in the South, to 5.02%. The exception was the North Central region, where past-due loans dipped 0.02 point to 3.88%. The percentage of foreclosures started during the first quarter rose to 0.37% from 0.33% in the previous three months.