More cheery numbers from the mortgage front

And now its credit-worthy home owners with prime mortgages that are jumping ship.

Foreclosure rates for loans that conform to the guidelines of now government owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have jumped 425% since January 2008. And the monthly rate of foreclosures has accelerated in the last two months, according to Lender Processing Services.

Unlike the subprime mortgages that set off the global financial crisis, conforming agency prime mortgages are held by borrowers regarded as the best credit risks.

There’s bad news and good news in these numbers.

The bad news should be pretty obvious: The last thing that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae need is more bad mortgages.

Mortgage deliquency rate projected to inch–and I mean inch–downward in 2010

Reassuring news on the home mortgage front: the tide of mortgage delinquencies will start to recede in 2010—unless you live in Arizona, California, Florida, New York or Virginia. Those states will see delinquencies continue to climb next year.

That’s the forecast from TransUnion, the big credit rating company, based on an analysis of credit trends over the last few months.

TransUnion isn’t talking about a big turnaround in the national trend in 2010. Just that mortgage delinquencies will peak in 2010 and then decline slightly.

Danger to banks from commercial mortgages still climbing

Delinquency rates for commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS)–that is commercial mortgage loans backed by office buildings, retail stores, hotels, and apartment buildings–that have been packaged into securities and then sold to investors–rose to 3.04% in July, according to Fitch Ratings. That’s the highest level since Fitch began tracking this sector in 2001.