Submitted by CARPE DIEM

According to Glenn Maguire, chief Asia economist for Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong:

The economic repercussions of the housing bust and mortgage woes are limited to a great extent because fewer than half of American families own a home with a mortgage. Almost a third of all families rent their house or apartment, almost a fourth own and have no mortgage and the vast majority with a mortgage are current in their payments. Even with about a tenth of all subprime mortgages now in foreclosure, only a small share of all American families — about 0.3% — own a home in foreclosure, he said.

It’s true: 55.5% of American households either rent their home or apartment (32%), or own a home with no mortgage (23.5%), see chart above. Then add in the 34.5% of homeowners with a prime mortgage, and the 4.2% of homeowners with a FHA or VA mortgage, and you’ve got more than 94% of American households who are NOT subprime borrowers, and fewer than 6% who are subprime borrowers. And the subprime fixed-rate mortgages are not really a problem, it’s only the subprime adjustable mortgages that are having problems with delinquencies and foreclosures.

Then consider that according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the percentage of loans in the foreclosure process was 1.69% of all loans outstanding at the end of the third quarter 2007 (both subprime and prime). But because only 44.4% of all homes have a mortgages, that means that only about .75% of all American household own a home in foreclosure.

(HT: Marginal Revolution)

Note: I think that Glenn Maguire gets a figure of only .30% of homes in foreclosure by looking at the rate of loans entering the foreclosure process (.78%), and not the percentage of all loans in the foreclosure process (1.69%).

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