Which housing markets have the most—and least—mortgage distress right now?

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s Resi Club in your inbox? Subscribe to the Resi Club newsletter. Before a home falls into foreclosure, the warning signs typically appear months earlier. A borrower first misses a payment or two, landing in the 30- or 60-day delinquency bucket. If financial stress persists, they fall further behind—90 to 180 days past due—and only around then (lenders generally can’t start foreclosure until a borrower is at least 120 days delinquent) does the foreclosure process typically begin. This progression matters because the pipeline of early-stage delinquencies today tells us a great deal about where foreclosure activity is headed tomorrow. Right now, that pipeline is small by historical standards—but it’s growing. Looking at the National Mortgage Database, early-stage delinquencies (30 or 60 days past due) have been ticking upward since 2022, and more serious delinquencies (90 to 180 days past due) have followed in kind. The pattern is consistent with a housing market slowly normalizing after years of extraordinary intervention. When COVID-19 lockdowns began, the federal government implemented a nationwide foreclosure moratorium to protect homeowners from the economic fallout. These protections—including forbearance programs—were extended multiple times. At the same time, a historic surge in housing demand pushed home prices to new highs during the Pandemic Housing Boom, boosting homeowner equity and keeping foreclosure activity unusually low. The data shows this clearly: foreclosure and serious delinquency rates cratered to historic lows around 2021. But in recent quarters, foreclosures have steadily returned, inching closer to pre-pandemic 2019 levels. That foreclosure rebound picked up pace in Q1 2025, following the expiration of the moratorium on VA-backed mortgages. As those protections have wound down, the underlying stress that had been deferred—not eliminated—is finally surfacing in the data. Still, perspectiv