Chicago-based credit bureau TransUnion recently conducted a study about bill-paying. The results showed that, when consumers are choosing which bills they can afford to pay, they are more likely to pay on their credit cards than their mortgage payments.

Unfortunately for mortgage companies, this is not a new trend, but one that TransUnion has been consistently finding in its surveys for the past three years. The only slight positive TransUnion could report is that the number of consumers current on credit cards, but delinquent on their mortgages had slightly declined. The number, however, is still more than 70% higher than at the start of what’s now being called the “Great Recession.”

“The percentage of consumers current on their credit card payments and delinquent on their mortgages first surpassed the percentage of consumers current on their mortgages and delinquent on credit cards in the Q1 2008,” the company said in a statement. “Although many industry analysts believed that a reversion to the conventional payment hierarchy would ensue once the recession had concluded, this has not been the case.”

Apparently, current economic and housing environment has consumers reevaluating their priorities.