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Mortgage delinquencies continue to rise
Mortgage delinquency rates continued their multi-year rise in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the latest Household Debt and Credit report released this week by the New York Fed.
Delinquency rates have been rising across all income levels since 2021, but are rising fastest in lower income groups. Among the 25% of homeowners in the lowest-income ZIP codes, the percentage who were more than 90 days late rose from 0.5% in 2021 to nearly 3.0% in the last quarter of 2025. Across all income levels, about 1.3% of mortgage balances became “seriously delinquent” in 2025.
That’s a national average. Researchers for the Fed looked at regional variation and outlined their findings in a blog post. Here’s what they found:
Local unemployment rates: Counties experiencing the steepest increases in unemployment in the past year saw the sharpest climb in newly delinquent mortgage balances — rising as much as three times faster than in counties where unemployment has stayed stable or declined.
Falling house prices: House prices nationally climbed about 1% in 2025, but again there is regional variation, and some areas — such as the Gulf Coast of Florida — saw a decline. Again, there was an association between falling house prices and rising delinquency, but it was not as pronounced as the correlation with jobless rates.
As shown in the Fed report, delinquency rates are also climbing for other kinds of consumer debt. While it’s not yet time to push the panic button, the trend is concerning.
“The share of credit card and auto loan balances that are seriously delinquent have hit levels not seen since the years following the Great Recession. And while student loan and mortgage delinquency rates remain below where they were before the pandemic, the rate of those balances moving into delinquency is high and rising,” NerdWallet senior economist Elizabeth Renter says.
“When households are unable to manage their debt payments, they can become increasingly unable to manage their day-to-day expenses. And should a financial emergency arise, they may not have the credit to help manage the burden.”
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