Survey Finds Mortgage Crisis is Hurting Other Sectors

A survey released Wednesday finds that fallout from the mortgage sector is spilling over into the broader economy, impacting companies across industries and their ability to collect payments.

Online Resources Corp. (Nasdaq:ORCC), a provider of web-based financial services, released the results of a survey of U.S. households and billers regarding the effect of the current mortgage crisis on bill payment and collection patterns.

The survey of more than 1,000 nationally representative U.S. households finds that Americans are increasingly being forced to prioritize among their bills by creating a "delinquency budget" to determine which bills get paid, Online Resources said in a release. While the mortgage bill tends to be the one that households are most likely to pay, businesses across other industries are facing a decreasing share of that delinquency budget.

Specific findings of the research include:

One out of four households report being delinquent on at least one bill, by 30 days or more.

If forced to chose between which bills to pay, 98 percent of households would likely pay their mortgage first.

Credit card, phone, healthcare, utility and loan payments are among the groups of bills that are least likely to be paid.

From: Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal (www.bizjournals.com)