I too am a bit surprised at the spike in NOD’s so soon – thought we wouldn’t see a run-up until next year as the ARM re-sets really get underway. Perhaps this spike is in some way related to the substantial number of homes recently purchased as speculative flips – someone who does not need the home as shelter and is more apt to simply walk away from a bad investment that they can’t sell? And walk away quickly due to getting killed on monthly carrying costs?

I would like to see a chart that takes into account the number of total mortgages in existence during the ’93 and ’96 peak NOD’s as well as the number of total mortgages today so as to provide a frame of reference for the raw NOD figures. If the number of homeowners/mortgages in ’06 is substantially higher than in ’93 and ’96, the NOD figures must also rise to achieve the same NOD percentage. The raw figures are great but NOD percentage figures would be better. Wish I had the time to research it.