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Mortgage delinquency and foreclosure rates may be going up here, but Arizona seems to be among the more stable areas of the country as pressure on some lenders shakes Wall Street.

A survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association shows a seasonally adjusted delinquency rate for residential mortgage loans of 4.95 percent nationally in the fourth quarter, up from 4.67 percent in the third quarter.

Arizona, by comparison, registered a delinquency rate of 3.51 percent in the latest period, compared with a rate in the eight-state Mountain region of 3.88 percent.

Among subprime loans to borrowers with poor credit, Arizona saw a "seriously delinquent" rate of 2.80 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with a national rate of 7.78 percent.

The Mortgage Banker survey tracked 191,119 subprime loans in Arizona compared with 855,196 prime loans during the fourth quarter. FHA and VA loans add 82,345 to the total.

San Francisco-based LoanPerformance, a mortgage data and analysis firm, tracks 2006 estimates for loan size by market and subprime's share of all purchase lending dollars in these markets.

For Tucson, the median loan last year was $121,900 and the subprime share was 15 percent. In Phoenix, the median loan was $145,200 and the subprime share was 24 percent.

A separate survey by RealtyTrac Inc. showed an increase in foreclosures in Pima County to 563 in January from 383 in December and 521 in January 2006. Statewide, foreclosures totaled 4,165 in January, up from 2,525 in December and 2,020 in January 2006, RealtyTrac reported.

Those figures could be just a one-month blip, said Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing with RealtyTrac in Irvine, Calif. Tucson's foreclosure numbers are "not out of the ordinary and are tame historically," he said. It appears, Sharga added, that Tucson "is doing a little better than most of the country."

Some Tucson lenders acknowledge the trend of higher foreclosures but see no fundamental weakness in the local market.

"Tucson's market is very strong with a good employment base," said Paul Volpe, loan officer and vice president at Nova Home Loans in Tucson. Some foreclosures now are the result of "liberal guidelines" in recent years when the housing market was red hot and people were scrambling to buy, sometimes by taking adjustable-rate mortgages that now are becoming more expensive due to higher interest rates, he said.

Some buyers invested in housing expecting to cash in on rising appraised values, but when that phenomenon cooled, they were unable to sell and are stuck with a loan they can't afford, he added.

Doug Olson, general manager of Arizona retail lending for First Magnus Home Loans, said Tucson's "lending situation is still very good," although the industry has become more conservative in recent months.

There has been "very significant" tightening of guidelines for lending in the last 60 days, he said, because of concerns about creditworthiness and property values. However, "we haven't seen that significant a drop in housing value here," he said.

Subprime loans to people with poor credit histories constitute only a small share of the business at Nova and First Magnus, the two lenders said.

Another lender said the market for existing housing priced between $175,000 and $350,000 remains strong.

"We've had a slowdown in values, not a collapse, but there may be a way to go on the downside, especially in the higher-end properties between $500,000 and $1 million," said Bill Anastopoulos, co-founder of Tucson Mortgage Co.