Prime home equity loans also saw DQs ratchet up to 8.29 percent from 3.77 percent one year earlier — underscoring the duress now facing many prime borrowers, given that the HELs on the books at Countrywide boast an average CLTV of 84 percent and average FICO of 727.
But perhaps the most surprising delinquency statistic of all was a stark jump in prime, conventional firsts that appear to have hit a wall during the first three months of 2008. Countrywide said that 6.48 percent of more traditional borrowers were delinquent during March, with 3.19 percent 90 or more days in arrears. That’s a jump of 127 percent in conventional first-lien DQs from one year ago, and a rise of nearly 13 percent in just one quarter.
It also appears that once they get there, more prime borrowers aren’t getting out of delinquency: the number of severe delinquencies within prime firsts alone rose nearly 40 percent between December and March.
