Where ARe Mortgage Delinuencies Rising the Most ine the U.S.?

Over the past year, mortgage delinquencies in the United States have begun to climb again, but the increase is not evenly spread across the country. The steepest rises are concentrated in economically and climatically vulnerable regions—particularly the Deep South and parts of the Eastern seaboard where higher poverty, slower income growth, and surging insurance and tax costs are pushing more borrowers behind on their payments. In these areas, both overall delinquency rates and serious delinquencies (90 or more days past due) are increasing faster than the national average, signaling localized pockets of mounting financial strain despite generally low unemployment.

The strongest concentration of rising mortgage delinquencies is in Southern states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. Recent analyses show Louisiana and Mississippi at or near the top of national rankings, with non‑current or delinquent rates often exceeding 7–8% and serious delinquency rates approaching or above 1.5 - 1.9%, far above the U.S. average. Industry data for 2025 also identify Louisiana and Mississippi among the states with the highest shares of loans 30+ and 90+ days delinquent, while Alabama and Texas show elevated levels as well. These trends reflect a mix of lower median incomes, higher poverty rates, and more fragile household balance sheets, all of which leave borrowers more exposed when living costs, interest rates, or insurance premiums rise.

While the South holds the highest levels, some states are notable because their delinquency rates are climbing the fastest from quarter to quarter. Mortgage industry data for the third quarter of 2025 show that Arizona, Louisiana, Indiana, Iowa, and Texas had the largest quarterly jumps in overall delinquency rates, with increases ranging from roughly 24 to 29 basis points in just one quarter. This pattern suggests that stress is spreading beyond traditional high‑delinquency states into parts of the Midwest and Southwest, where higher interest rates and cost‑of‑living pressures are squeezing newer homeowners. At the same time, national measures report that both new mortgage delinquencies and transitions into serious delinquency rose toward the end of 2025, indicating that more borrowers are moving from early‑stage trouble into deeper arrears.

Another cluster of rapidly rising serious delinquencies appears in coastal states, especially in the Southeast, where property taxes and insurance costs have surged. Data for 2025 highlight Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia as states with particularly strong upticks in serious delinquencies, coinciding with large increases in insurance premiums and escrow payments driven by hurricane and flood risk. For example, in Florida, property taxes and insurance have pushed average escrow payments up dramatically over the past five years, leaving many households with mortgage payment “shocks” that strain budgets. As a result, even borrowers who were previously current are more likely to fall 90 or more days behind, contributing to the double‑digit percentage increase in late‑stage delinquencies seen nationally at the end of 2025.

At the metro level, the sharpest increases in mortgage distress are concentrated in specific cities rather than evenly across all urban areas. Analyses of major metros show that cities like Laredo, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; and Newark, New Jersey have some of the highest shares of delinquent mortgages, with Laredo’s delinquency rate estimated around 24%, Detroit near 19%, and Newark about 17% in mid‑2025 far above typical national levels. Other Southern metros, including San Antonio, Memphis, Houston, and Birmingham, also report elevated delinquency rates compared with West Coast cities. In contrast, metros such as San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, and many Pacific Northwest cities retain very low delinquency rates, underscoring the geographic divide between the most and least stressed housing markets.

Taken together, current data show that mortgage delinquencies are rising the most in a band that runs through the Deep South, parts of the Midwest and Southwest, and several tax‑ and climate‑pressured coastal states, with particularly acute stress in cities like Laredo, Detroit, and Newark. These patterns reveal that delinquency risk today is driven less by broad national unemployment and more by localized factors—such as low household resilience, rapid increases in insurance and tax burdens, and region‑specific economic shocks that concentrate mortgage trouble in certain regions rather than across the country as a whole.