December mortgage report shows Florida homeowners falling behind faster than other states

by | Jan 30, 2023



  • Despite improvements in the state’s economic outlook, delinquent mortgage payments rose in Florida last month.
  • Financial analysts say part of the problem in Florida has been the financial impact of two hurricanes hitting the state late last year.
  • Florida’s rise in delinquent mortgages was the fastest in the nation in December 2022.

The Sunshine State wasn’t looking quite so sunny last month when stacked up against national mortgage performance statistics, which is one indicator of the strength of the state’s economy. Thanks in part to Hurricane Ian, Florida saw a spike in delinquent mortgages in December, an increase of 22 percent in the past six months. That’s bad enough to make Florida the most rapidly worsening state in terms of mortgage delinquency growth.

Overall, though, Florida doesn’t look quite so bad. The state’s mortgage delinquency rate had actually improved through last August, but that number number has been creeping up in the winter months due to the economic hardship created from two late-forming hurricanes in that span.

Jacksonville, Florida-based Black Knight, Inc., a mortgage technology and data provider, issued a “first look” report at the December 2022 mortgage performance statistics, which also show that mortgage prepayment activity fell to 0.39% – with single month mortality (SMM) hitting its third consecutive record low dating back to 2000 when Black Knight began reporting the metric. Single month mortality (SMM) is a measure used in the mortgage industry to compare the rate at which borrowers prepay their mortgages within a given month. A lowering SMM rate is one possible indicator of a slowing or weakening economy. It is calculated by dividing the number of mortgages that were prepaid within a month by the total number of mortgages outstanding at the start of that month.

Even so, Black Knight says the recent setbacks in Florida are largely driven by storm recovery issues and that the state had previously made great strides after being one of the hardest hit states after the recession in 2008-2010. Florida was also one of the hardest hit states during the COVID pandemic, ranking in the bottom five in the nation for homeowners who had fallen behind in their payments. But Black Knight says the state made a remarkable recovery over that span.

“Florida has come a long way. After five years of having the highest non-current rate of any state following the Great Financial Crisis – and the highest concentration of underwater homeowners from late 2013 through 2015 – Floridians’ mortgage performance had been trending stronger in recent years,” said Andy Walden, VP of enterprise research strategy at Black Knight. “Florida’s non-current rate had fallen to 3.31% in August of last year, ranking 23rd among all states, its [best] non-current ranking in more than 22 years. That said, the impact of hurricane Ian has pushed delinquencies higher recently, with 35K more past-due homeowners than prior to the storm – a 29% increase as of the end of 2022.”

In Florida, serious delinquencies (90+ days past due) rose by 8,700 in the wake of Hurricane Ian. That same statistic has actually improved nationally, with 44 other states seeing that measure decline in the month.

Read Black Knight’s national mortgage report here.

1 Comment

  1. Gloria Horning

    Insurance rates went up by 40% with DeSantis blessings. My home insurance doubled. And let’s not forget he also bailed out the insurance companies then many of them just shut down.
    If you have a mortgage you have to have home insurance and with the new FEMA flood maps many are now required to have flood insurance. The price of home ownership is out of reach for so many.

 

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