MIAMI—What U.S. cities lead the country when it comes to delinquencies? According to a new report from WalletHub, Laredo, Texas has the biggest payment problems of any city in the U.S., while Seattle has the fewest issues.
With Americans owing around $17.5 trillion in total household debt, WalletHub has released its new report on the Cities Where People Are the Most Delinquent on Debt to show where people are at the biggest risk of credit score damage and other negative consequences, according to the company.
“To highlight the places where people are having the biggest issues paying their bills, WalletHub analyzed proprietary user data from Q4 2023 for the 100 largest cities for which we could obtain a complete data set,” WalletHub said. “In our ranking, we considered both the percentage of individual tradelines that were delinquent and the percentages of residents’ total loan balances that were delinquent.”
Additional Findings
The analysis found that in Laredo, approximately 14.9% of loans and lines of credit in the city were delinquent in Q4 2023, the second-highest percentage in the country, WalletHub said. “However, just looking at the number of accounts that are delinquent doesn’t give the full picture. The amount of debt that’s delinquent matters, too,” WalletHub said. “When all the dollar amounts are added together, Laredo residents are actually delinquent on 19.9% of their overall debt. That is the highest percentage in the country and why Laredo ranks first in this study.”
Detroit is the second-most delinquent city, with residents delinquent on 14.8% of all their loans and lines of credit. This is the third-highest delinquency rate in terms of the number of individual tradelines, the analysis found.
“When you look at dollar amounts, Detroit residents are delinquent on 16.5% of their entire debt, the second-highest rate in the country. Given that this report takes both metrics into consideration, Detroit ranks second in the study overall (other cities that ranked higher in one metric ranked lower in another),” WalletHub said.
San Bernardino, Calif., has the third-worst debt delinquency problem, with around 15% of loans and lines of credit in the city delinquent as of Q4 2023, the highest percentage in the country.
“When it comes to dollar amounts, San Bernardino residents are delinquent on 13% of their entire debt. This is the fifth highest percentage in the country,” WalletHub said.
Now With Free Shipping! The CUToday.info Daily News Email Keeps Getting Better!
The biggest, best and freshest news reporting in credit unions remains free, and now has an added bonus---free shipping to your email address! That’s right. Each morning CUToday.info delivers its daily Fresh Today news update offering the latest headlines and breaking news right to your email, with the easy-to-read headlines format allowing you to click on the stories that interest you most in order to learn more. So stop paying those bank-fee-like subscription prices from other so-called “news” publications!
If you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time—and it’s free!
Please note that after signing up you may need to go to your Spam/Junk folder and mark the morning headlines email as safe. CUToday.info does not provide its list of readers and emails to outside parties, and we will not be contacting you to sell you an extended warranty or sending you any links so you may cash in on an inheritance you didn’t know was coming.
And did we mention it’s free?