Search Results
Discussion Paper
Have Consumers Been Deleveraging?
Since its peak in summer 2008, U.S. consumers? indebtedness has fallen by more than a trillion dollars. Over roughly the same period, charge-offs?the removal of obligations from consumers? credit reports because of defaults?have risen sharply, especially on loans secured by houses, which make up about 80 percent of consumer liabilities. An important question for gauging the behavior of U.S. consumers is how to interpret these two trends. Is the reduction in debts entirely attributable to defaults, or are consumers actively reducing their debts? In this post, we demonstrate that a significant ...
Discussion Paper
Just Released: Student Loan Delinquency Rate Defies Overall Downward Trend in Household Debt and Credit Report for Fourth Quarter 2014
Today, the New York Fed released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the fourth quarter of 2014. The report is based on data from the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel, a nationally representative sample drawn from anonymized Equifax credit data. Overall, aggregate balances increased by $117 billion, or 1.0 percent, boosted by increases in all credit types except home equity lines of credit.
Discussion Paper
Have Consumers Been Deleveraging?
Since its peak in summer 2008, U.S. consumers’ indebtedness has fallen by more than a trillion dollars. Over roughly the same period, charge-offs—the removal of obligations from consumers’ credit reports because of defaults—have risen sharply, especially on loans secured by houses, which make up about 80 percent of consumer liabilities. An important question for gauging the behavior of U.S. consumers is how to interpret these two trends. Is the reduction in debts entirely attributable to defaults, or are consumers actively reducing their debts? In this post, we demonstrate that a ...
Discussion Paper
Looking at Student Loan Defaults through a Larger Window
Most of our previous discussion about high levels of student loan delinquency and default has used static measures of payment status. But it is also instructive to consider the experience of borrowers over the lifetime of their student loans rather than at a point in time. In this second post in our three-part series on student loans, we use the Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), which is itself based on Equifax credit data, to create cohort default rates (CDRs) that are analogous to those produced by the Department of Education but go beyond their three-year window. We find that default rates ...
Discussion Paper
Credit Card Trends Begin to Normalize after Pandemic Paydown
Today, the New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the third quarter of 2021. Overall debt balances increased, bolstered primarily by a sizeable increase in mortgage balances, and for the second consecutive quarter, an increase in credit card balances. The changes in credit card balances in the second and third quarters of 2021 are remarkable since they appear to be a return to the normal seasonal patterns in balances. In a Liberty Street Economics post earlier this year we wrote about some demographic variation in these ...
Discussion Paper
The New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel: A Foundational CMD Data Set
As the Great Financial Crisis and associated recession were unfolding in 2009, researchers at the New York Fed joined colleagues at the Board of Governors and Philadelphia Fed to create a new kind of data set. Household liabilities, particularly mortgages, had gone from being a quiet little corner of the financial system to the center of the worst financial crisis and sharpest recession in decades. The new data set was designed to provide fresh insights into this part of the economy, especially the behavior of mortgage borrowers. In the fifteen years since that effort came to fruition, the ...
Discussion Paper
Who Is Still on First? An Update of Characteristics of First‑Time Homebuyers
Following the COVID-19 health crisis, home prices and mortgage rates rose sharply. This created concerns that first-time homebuyers (FTBs) would be disadvantaged and would lose ground. Earlier this year, we documented that the share of purchase mortgages by FTBs, as well as their share of home purchases, have actually increased slightly over the past couple of years. It appears that FTBs are holding their own in this challenging housing market. This raises the question of whether the characteristics of FTBs have changed. In a 2019 post, we described the characteristics of these buyers over ...
Discussion Paper
Auto Loan Delinquency Revs Up as Car Prices Stress Budgets
The New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the fourth quarter of 2023 this morning. Household debt balances grew by $212 billion over the last quarter. Although there was growth across most loan types, it was moderate compared to the fourth-quarter changes seen in the past few years. Mortgage balances grew by $112 billion and home equity line of credit (HELOC) balances saw an $11 billion bump as borrowers tapped home equity in lieu of refinancing first mortgages. Credit card balances, which typically see substantial ...
Discussion Paper
Just Released: Looking under the Hood of the Subprime Auto Lending Market
Today, the New York Fed released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the second quarter of 2014. Aggregate debt was relatively flat in the second quarter as housing-related debt shrank, held down by sluggish mortgage originations. But non-housing debt balances increased across the board, with especially strong gains in auto loans. Auto loan balances, which include leases, have increased for thirteen straight quarters, and originations have not been this high since the third quarter of 2006. The Quarterly Report and the following analysis are based on data from the New York ...
Discussion Paper
Younger Borrowers Are Struggling with Credit Card and Auto Loan Payments
Total debt balances grew by $394 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, the largest nominal quarterly increase in twenty years, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit from the New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data. Mortgage balances, the largest form of household debt, drove the increase with a gain of $254 billion, while credit card balances saw a $61 billion increase—the largest observed in the history of our data, which goes back to 1999.