S&Ls blame mortgage woes for the rise in nonperforming loans.

Home buyers who bought upscale Southern California real estate at peak prices in the late 1980s are one of the major factors driving nonperforming loans to their highest levels at Los Angeles County-based savings and loans, lenders say.

Some delinquent and nonperforming loans are to be expected in any institution's portfolio and a rate of 2 percent or less nonperformers is "standard," said Sally McGiver, a savings and loan analyst with SNL Securities in Charlottesville, Va.

But the big thrifts based in L.A. County are sporting nonperforming loan rates of between 3 and 6 percent, and lenders say the reason is that homeowners who have been laid off are not able to pay their mortgages.

At Glendale Federal Bank, the percentage of loans that were either 90 days delinquent or had been restructured was at 4.76 percent at the end of July, up from 4.62 percent in June and 3.69 percent in July 1991, said Judy Cunningham, spokeswoman for the savings and loan.

Terry Hess, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Glendale Federal Bank said "a lot of the percentage are the larger residential loans of $500,000 or more." Some of Glenfed's customers who are in default were speculating on the residential real estate market. They bought homes in the late 1980s, at the end of the boom, hoping to sell the homes for more money, Hess said.

"A lot of them are yuppies who got in over their heads," Cunningham added.

Others are just people who lost their jobs and can't pay the mortgage, Hess said. "We've had more white-collar unemployment than we've had before," he said.

Home Savings of America, the largest S&L in the country, counted 5.25 percent of its $42 billion loan portfolio either in foreclosure or 90 days or more past due, the highest delinquency rate ever, said Home Savings spokeswoman Mary Trigg. A year before, the giant thrift had a delinquency rate of 3.1 percent, Trigg said.

"We had a large volume of loans which were originated in the last four years," Trigg said, noting that the S&L originated $14.8 billion in loans in 1988 and $13 billion in 1990.

Home Savings is known for targeting higher-end residential properties with an average loan of $151,500 made in California. That may be why it had a higher delinquency rate than competitor Great Western Financial Corp., which targets a lower-income home buyer, making an average loan of $131,000 last year.

Chatsworth-based Great Western, while having a lower delinquency rate than Home, has not escaped unscathed. It saw nonperformers grow to 4.6 percent of their portfolio as of July 1992, compared to 3.5 percent of total loans in July 1991, said Great Western spokesman Steve Hawkins. "We are feeling the effects of a prolonged and deep recession," he said.

At Santa Monica-based First Federal Bank, a thrift praised by industry experts for being conservative and profitable, delinquencies have risen from 2 percent to 3 percent of the institution's portfolio in the last six months, said Babette Heimbuch, president of First Federal. "It's the highest we've ever had in our history," Heimbuch said.

She reported that "the majority" of First Federal's delinquent residential loans were made in the late 1980s, when home prices topped out. "We're definitely concerned because we see the recovery in Southern California delayed. Until the layoffs stop, we can't expect to see a recovery."

These residential loan problems are hitting beleaguered thrifts just as the institutions were starting to get out from under problems caused by commercial real estate TABULAR DATA OMITTED loans, said James Hurley, senior vice president of investor relations at L.A.-based California Federal Bank.

"Residential and multi-family loans, which historically have produced less-severe losses (than commercial loans), comprised 73 percent of our nonperforming loans at the end of June," Hurley said. By comparison, residential loans made up only 46 percent of the nonperforming loans in June 1991, Hurley said.

At California Federal Bank, nonperforming loans -- which include loans 90 days or more delinquent, foreclosed-on real estate and restructured loans -- made up 6.66 percent of the thrift's total loan portfolio as of June 30, 1992, compared to 4.48 percent at June 30, 1991, Hurley said.

"We expect nonperformers to peak before the end of the year," Hurley said. But he added that California Federal officials expect "between $50 million and $60 million in new nonperformers in the third quarter."

At Los Angeles-based Coast Federal Bank, 5.3 percent of its loan portfolio was in default as of June 30, 1992, as compared to 4.5 percent at the end of June 30, 1991, said Priscilla Finch, assistant vice president of investor relations. Coast, like its competitors, is seeing an increase in defaults of residential mortgages, she said.

Mortgage delinquencies in Los Angeles County have been steadily climbing since the first quarter of 1990 but have really shot up in 1992, according to Heather McKay, product manager of the loan-performance data base at San Francisco-based Mortgage Information Corp.

In June, 1.08 percent of all mortgages in L.A. County were 90 days or more delinquent, according to Mortgage Information Corp.

An increase in nonperforming residential loans always follows increases in commercial nonperforming loans, said E. Garreth Plank, a savings and loan analyst at Maybon Securities in San Francisco.

When nonperforming loans reach "in excess of 5 percent with a thrift you start to get a little worried," Plank said. Big, well-capitalized savings and loans, like Home Savings, can survive downturns. "But for institutions with thinner capital -- the Calfeds, the Glenfeds -- increasing nonperformers can be catastrophic," Plank said.

Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Economic Development Corp. of L.A. County, said the default problems can be directly attributed to the county's unemployment rate of 11.2 percent. Kyser noted that number of out-of-work people is the same as the entire populations of Lakewood and Long Beach combined.

"The trend is, frankly, quite scary," Kyser said. "People are going to hang onto the house above everything else."