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CHICAGO — U.S. consumers are starting to look like a frugal, debt-fearing lot as they pay down billions of dollars in credit-card obligations. But an alarming trend is emerging: A small but growing number of people are skipping mortgage payments in favor of paying their credit-card bills.

In an unprecedented shift, for some consumers, having a credit card in good standing seems to have taken priority over having a roof over one’s head, experts said.

“This is not a carefree or nonchalant decision,” said Ezra Becker, director of consulting and strategy at TransUnion, the credit-tracking firm. “But it really is a clear illustration of the impact this recession has had on consumer preferences and behavior.”

While overall consumer debt rose unexpectedly in January, consumers continued to pay off their credit cards that month — a record 16th straight month of lower credit-card debt — with such debt dropping about $1.7 billion to $864.4 billion, according to the Federal Reserve.

But a small slice of those consumers are paying down credit cards to the detriment of their mortgages. The number of consumers delinquent on their mortgages but current on their credit cards rose to 6.6 percent in the third quarter of 2009 from 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2008, according to a TransUnion study of 27 million anonymous consumer records taken at random from its database. Meanwhile, the portion of those who fell behind on credit-card payments but paid their mortgage dropped to 3.6 percent from 4.1 percent.

TransUnion first began noticing the shift in the fourth quarter of 2007. Experts thought the pattern would reverse once the worst of the recession passed, but TransUnion’s latest study confirms that the new behavior is becoming more prevalent and stretches across all income groups.

The trend is more common among consumers with the lowest credit scores. The percentage of consumers with low scores who paid credit cards rather than home loans shot up to 29 percent in the third quarter of 2009 from 19.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, TransUnion said. In that low-credit-score group, consumers falling behind on credit cards but keeping up with mortgage payments declined to 14.5 percent in 2009 from 18.1 percent in the first quarter of 2008.

But mortgage-payment problems are moving up the credit-score ladder, says FICO, the credit-score company. A recent FICO Score Trends report found that mortgage-default risk for consumers with high scores now exceeds their credit-card-default risk, “reversing a long historic trend.”

While the numbers are small, the trend is disturbing, said Mark Greene, chief executive of FICO.

“We’re identifying lending-industry situations in FICO Score Trends that, to our knowledge, have never been seen before,” he said in the report.

You can blame those trends on a deep economic slump that’s pulled the rug out from under long-held jobs, home values and retirement accounts. In the wake of a new credit-card law as banks tighten the screws on who gets credit and how much, some consumers are getting more protective of their credit cards. Plus, with unemployment at a hefty 9.7 percent, people are worried about losing their job and perhaps needing their plastic to get by.

On top of that, many homeowners now find themselves owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. For some, holding on to the undervalued house suddenly doesn’t look like the smartest thing to do now.

“The combination of all these things makes some consumers think that paying money on the mortgage might not be in their best interest relative to the credit card,” said TransUnion’s Becker. “If I’m unemployed, I need to rely on the credit cards to get me through it till I get a job.”

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