As the coronavirus pandemic continues to keep people out of work and strain savings, the number of homeowners who have missed their mortgage payments has more than doubled in the last few months.
According to Black Knight, a mortgage data company, 4.3 million homeowners didn’t pay their mortgage in May, which is up from just 2 million in March. That 4.3 million represents 8% of all mortgages, and it’s the highest number of delinquencies since 2011. The number includes both homeowners who have made arrangements with their loan servicer to delay payments and those who have simply missed payments.
While foreclosures are currently at an all-time low due to a federal moratorium amid the pandemic, it’s unclear if those programs will extend beyond the summer. Though the data so far for June suggests that the delinquencies may be leveling off, there are still 631,000 homeowners with payments that are more than 90 days past due, which is up 50% over the past two months.
The states with the highest percentage of delinquencies are Mississippi, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey and Florida.
