Road to nowhere?
The share of borrowers who are currently off track with their car repayments hit an almost 3-decade high in September, as 6.1% of Americans with subprime car loans fell 60+ days behind on their dues.
According to data from credit rating agency Fitch Ratings, as reported by Bloomberg, the figure hasn’t risen above the 6% mark since the start of 1994 — when the share sat around 1% — with borrowers increasingly squeezed by a heady mixture of rising vehicle prices and interest rate hikes.
Fear the repo
Pandemic savings and stimulus checks helped drivers to splash out on pricier vehicles than they’d perhaps originally had their eyes on, but those decisions increasingly appear to be coming back to cost some of them. As expected, with more car owners becoming delinquent, tow trucks have become a more common sight on America’s roads, with the rate of vehicle repossessions in the US reportedly up more than 20% earlier this year.
