The Wall Street Journal real estate reports that the surge in mortgage delinquencies in the past few months is squeezing lenders and unsettling investors world-wide in the $10 trillion U.S. mortgage market. The increase in mortgage delinquencies is caused by the recent bubble bursting of the residential real estate market in some markets.

The pain is most apparent in subprime mortgages, though there are signs it is spreading to other parts of the mortgage market. Roughly 80,000 subprime borrowers who took out mortgages packaged into securities this year are behind on their payments.

There are some high profile failures in the subprime lenders industry lately. H&R Block Inc., which operates Option One, a major subprime lender, said last week that its mortgage-services unit posted a pretax loss of $39 million in the fiscal second quarter ended Oct. 31. And KeyCorp said it reached a deal to sell its subprime Champion Mortgage business.

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