Following the drastic increase directly after the COVID-19 pandemic, the delinquency rate started to gradually decline, falling below *** percent in the second quarter of 2023. In the second half of 2023, the delinquency rate picked up, but remained stable throughout 2024. In the first quarter of 2025, **** percent of mortgage loans were delinquent. That was significantly lower than the **** percent during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 or the peak of *** percent during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2010. What does the mortgage delinquency rate tell us? The mortgage delinquency rate is the share of the total number of mortgaged home loans in the U.S. where payment is overdue by 30 days or more. Many borrowers eventually manage to service their loan, though, as indicated by the markedly lower foreclosure rates. Total home mortgage debt in the U.S. stood at almost ** trillion U.S. dollars in 2024. Not all mortgage loans are made equal ‘Subprime’ loans, being targeted at high-risk borrowers and generally coupled with higher interest rates to compensate for the risk. These loans have far higher delinquency rates than conventional loans. Defaulting on such loans was one of the triggers for the 2007-2010 financial crisis, with subprime delinquency rates reaching almost ** percent around this time. These higher delinquency rates translate into higher foreclosure rates, which peaked at just under ** percent of all subprime mortgages in 2011.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 was a period of severe macroeconomic instability for the United States and the global economy more generally. The crisis was precipitated by the collapse of a number of financial institutions who were deeply involved in the U.S. mortgage market and associated credit markets. Beginning in the Summer of 2007, a number of banks began to report issues with increasing mortgage delinquencies and the problem of not being able to accurately price derivatives contracts which were based on bundles of these U.S. residential mortgages. By the end of 2008, U.S. financial institutions had begun to fail due to their exposure to the housing market, leading to one of the deepest recessions in the history of the United States and to extensive government bailouts of the financial sector.

Subprime and the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market

The early 2000s had seen explosive growth in the U.S. mortgage market, as credit became cheaper due to the Federal Reserve's decision to lower interest rates in the aftermath of the 2001 'Dot Com' Crash, as well as because of the increasing globalization of financial flows which directed funds into U.S. financial markets. Lower mortgage rates gave incentive to financial institutions to begin lending to riskier borrowers, using so-called 'subprime' loans. These were loans to borrowers with poor credit scores, who would not have met the requirements for a conventional mortgage loan. In order to hedge against the risk of these riskier loans, financial institutions began to use complex financial instruments known as derivatives, which bundled mortgage loans together and allowed the risk of default to be sold on to willing investors. This practice was supposed to remove the risk from these loans, by effectively allowing credit institutions to buy insurance against delinquencies. Due to the fraudulent practices of credit ratings agencies, however, the price of these contacts did not reflect the real risk of the loans involved. As the reality of the inability of the borrowers to repay began to kick in during 2007, the financial markets which traded these derivatives came under increasing stress and eventually led to a 'sudden stop' in trading and credit intermediation during 2008.

Market Panic and The Great Recession

As borrowers failed to make repayments, this had a knock-on effect among financial institutions who were highly leveraged with financial instruments based on the mortgage market. Lehman Brothers, one of the world's largest investment banks, failed on September 15th 2008, causing widespread panic in financial markets. Due to the fear of an unprecedented collapse in the financial sector which would have untold consequences for the wider economy, the U.S. government and central bank, The Fed, intervened the following day to bailout the United States' largest insurance company, AIG, and to backstop financial markets. The crisis prompted a deep recession, known colloquially as The Great Recession, drawing parallels between this period and The Great Depression. The collapse of credit intermediation in the economy lead to further issues in the real economy, as business were increasingly unable to pay back loans and were forced to lay off staff, driving unemployment to a high of almost 10 percent in 2010. While there has been criticism of the U.S. government's actions to bailout the financial institutions involved, the actions of the government and the Fed are seen by many as having prevented the crisis from spiraling into a depression of the magnitude of The Great Depression.

this data base contains USD/MAD and EUR/MAD returns in addition to S&P GSCI returns from 15 October 2005 until the 31 December 2014 as the main sample,then we divided this sample into four subsamples, (after & before) the subprime crisis, and (before & after) the debt crisis