With a little help from FirstAmerican CoreLogic and Loan Performance, officials at the New York Federal Reserve Bank said Tuesday that they’ve rolled out a set of dynamic maps and data that illustrate subprime and alt-A mortgage loan conditions across the United States. It’s actually a pretty neat little tool, although the data is far from real time: the most recent dataset when we visited the site for a look-see was from December 2007. Nonetheless, the tool provides a wealth of information on local housing markets with a simple click of your mouse.
The maps, which are maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will display regional variation in the condition of securitized, owner-occupied subprime, and alt-A mortgage loans — are intended in part to be used to assist in the identification of existing and potential foreclosure hotspots. The newly-available interactive data may assist community groups, Fed officials said, which can mobilize resources to bring financial counseling and other resources to at-risk homeowners. Officials also said that policymakers and local governments would benefit from the additional data. The data shows a wealth of information by county and ZIP code, including:
- Loans per 1,000 housing units
- Loans in foreclosure per 1,000 housing units
- Loans real estate owned (REO) per 1,000 housing units
- Share of loans that are adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs)
- Share of loans for which payments are current
- Share of loans that are 90-plus days delinquent
- Share of loans in foreclosure
- Median combined loan-to-value ratio (LTV) at origination
- Share of loans with low credit score (FICO) and high LTV at origination
- Share of loans with low- or no documentation
- Share of ARMs with initial reset in the next 12 months
- Share of loans with a late payment in the past 12 months
Most servicers and investors likely have the data on a subscription basis, but still, I doubt many have put in the time to develop a Flash-based visual interface to display it. The move by Federal officials to make the data available comes as public groups and local governments are demanding greater information from lenders on housing trends in various local markets. I’d expect this move can help quell some of the industry’s concern in this area, by providing a centralized source for local-level mortgage data.
