Today’s must-read housing story comes from David Streitfeld of the New York Times where details are provided on the remarkable surge in “jingle-mail” from rich folks.

No need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

This seems like one of those data points that just can’t be right. More than 15 percent  of borrowers whose home loans total a million dollars or more are delinquent?

One reason why this could be right, but at the same time highly misleading, is that million dollar homes don’t necessarily carry million dollar mortgages. If memory serves, the proportion of homes owned outright is much higher at this level than, say, in the $200K range. Rich folks often buy their multi-million dollar homes with cash.

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