The AP story here, "Late Auto Payment Rose in the Fourth Quarter: TransUnion", was picked up and dutifully reproduced at at least 900 websites containing the error "The national late-payment rate on auto loans peaked in the first three months of 2000 at 2.39 percent, the firm said":
The rate of auto loans with payments late by 60 days or more was 0.41 percent in the last three months of 2012. That's up from 0.38 percent in the previous quarter, but down from 0.46 percent a year earlier, TransUnion said.
Turek noted that the company always sees a slight uptick in the auto loan delinquency rate during the fourth quarter. The financial pressures of holiday shopping can lead some borrowers to delay or skip a loan payment — a dynamic that also leads to higher late-payment rates for credit cards and home loans.
Even so, the fourth quarter's late-payment rate remained near the lowest rate on TransUnion's records going back to 1999. That record-low rate, 0.33 percent, was recorded in the second quarter of last year.
The national late-payment rate on auto loans peaked in the first three months of 2000 at 2.39 percent, the firm said.
If the firm said that, I'd be very surprised.
Turek in 2010 previously stated, here, that the peak was in late 2008, at 0.86%, which is 160% higher than the all time low on TransUnion's scale:
"The good news is that TransUnion expects national auto delinquency rates to continue to be well below the peak of 0.86 percent -- a rate experienced during the heart of the recession in the fourth quarter of 2008."
TransUnion's own graphic shows that the scale of the national rate is measured in tenths and hundreths of a percent, while the scale measuring the worst delinquencies in the worst of times in the worst states doesn't even reach as high as 1.80%:
So something is really amiss with the AP story.
Separately, a story here from March 2011 indicates that auto loan delinquencies, measured using a different scale but with a similar difference between highs and lows in the neighborhood of 160%, were never higher than in 2008-2009, which rules out the year 2000 for worst year in modern times for auto loan delinquencies:
From late 2008 through 2009, dealers and consumers found themselves in the midst of the worst credit crisis in modern US history. Lending activity froze, thus limiting dealers’ ability to finance their inventories and provide consumers access to auto loans. With unemployment rising and home foreclosures breaking records during this time, auto loan delinquencies peaked as well. Normally, seriously delinquent (90-plus days past due) auto loans represent between 4% and 7% of outstanding auto loans. In the fourth quarter of 2008, however, such loans totaled $8.5 billion and 13.9% of outstanding auto loans. In the first quarter of 2009 that share climbed to a historic high of 15.9%. Fortunately for the auto-sales industry, delinquencies, in value and percentage terms, rapidly declined during the second half of 2010.
Messages left with two different individuals in TransUnion's media relations department in Chicago yesterday seeking confirmation of the AP story remain unanswered at this hour.
