The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation last week announced that delinquency rates on home-equity lines of credit improved in the second quarter, signaling a possible “turning point in asset quality” for lenders and investors nationwide. FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair highlighted banks’ rising

HELOC fortunes at the agency’s quarterly banking profile press conference Aug. 27. “Not all of the news in the second quarter was bad,” Bair told reporters. “Non-current home-equity and junior-lien mortgages declined for the first time in six quarters.” Statistics showed 1.73 percent of HELOCs were uncollectable or past due by at least three months, a quarter-percent drop from the previous quarter. The delinquency rate on closed-end second liens also fell half a percent to 3.26 percent in the second quarter. There was one cloudy spot, however: FDIC-insured institutions charged off $5.1 billion in HELOCs and $2.7 billion in junior liens — a 30 percent jump from the previous quarter. Bair urged that the figures be greeted with caution. “Are these signs of a turning point in asset quality?” she asked. “This may turn out to be the case. But we’re going to need another quarter or two to confirm a trend.”