Hurricane Irma is still disrupting local mortgage repayments. It has by no means reached a point where we should be concerned about another meltdown in our market, but the impact shouldn’t be ignored. Before the hurricane, our market was showing significant year on year downturns in mortgage delinquency rates and foreclosures. The mortgage market looked about as healthy as it could get. Thus, the real estate market looked the same.
Within a month of Irma, we started to see a spike in short term mortgage delinquencies. Several people simply couldn’t pay their mortgages or chose not to do so. That trend has continued ever since. The most recent data shows that there are 46% more people 30 days late on their mortgages than there was last year at the same time. The total is still only 6%, which isn’t terrible, but it is significantly higher than last year.
Now that we have seen significant time pass since Irma, longer-term mortgage delinquencies are rising as well. We define long-term delinquencies as people who are 90 days or more late on their mortgage payments. The latest data shows that long-term delinquencies are up over 50% when compared to last year at this time. Again, the total is relatively low at 3.4%; however, the year on year rise is significant.
The good news is that we haven’t yet seen a spike in foreclosures, but it sure looks like it will be coming. It likely won’t be enough volume to materially change pricing our market, but it should create a few good buying opportunities for people looking at buying homes in foreclosure.