Great time to be a renter

The saga of what Atrios has dubbed "big shitpile" (i.e. housing loans that won't be repaid, and all the financial instruments that are worthless as a result) is entering another, potentially bigger phase:

The first wave of Americans to default on their home mortgages appears to be cresting, but a second, far larger one is quickly building.

Homeowners with good credit are falling behind on their payments in growing numbers, even as the problems with mortgages made to people with weak, or subprime, credit are showing their first, tentative signs of leveling off after two years of spiraling defaults.

The percentage of mortgages in arrears in the category of loans one rung above subprime, so-called alternative-A mortgages, quadrupled to 12 percent in April from a year earlier. Delinquencies among prime loans, which account for most of the $12 trillion market, doubled to 2.7 percent in that time.

Conflict of interest disclosure: The author of Internal Monologue and his family are currently renters, and and are considering purchasing a home in the intermediate future. So it is in their interest to jawbone down the housing market as much as possible.