Does Homeowners Insurance Cover Flood Damage?

No. Standard homeowners insurance doesn’t cover flood damage, full stop. That gap is bigger than most people think, and it’s not just about living in a mapped flood zone.

What Does FEMA Actually Say About This?

FEMA put out a press release October 15 headed, plainly, “Most Homeowners Insurance Does Not Cover Flood Damage.” Between 2003 and 2023, 99 percent of counties in the country had a flood event. Flood coverage is its own separate policy, through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private carrier, and the one line worth remembering is FEMA’s own: you don’t need a presidential disaster declaration to get paid on a flood policy. That’s a different process than the one behind Thursday’s news, which I get into further down.

If I’m Not in a Flood Zone, Do I Actually Need Flood Insurance?

A lot of people do and don’t know it. A government watchdog report, GAO-27-108012, published October 1, found that from 2014 to 2024 almost a third of all NFIP claims came from properties sitting in low to moderate risk flood zones, the areas nobody’s required to insure. As of April 2026, 86 percent of high risk properties nationally had no NFIP coverage at all. The reason traces back to how mandatory purchase works: it only applies inside the mapped high risk zones. GAO found about 43 percent of properties inside those zones carry flood insurance, against roughly 2 percent of high risk properties outside them. The requirement is the only thing driving coverage, and it only reaches the properties already on the map.

What’s Florida’s Own Number?

As of December 2025, 26 percent of Florida properties were classified high risk, and 18 percent had flood coverage, NFIP or private. That’s a different measure than the national 86 percent figure above, a different date and it counts private policies too, so the two don’t subtract against each other. One thing working in Florida’s favor: the state’s 2023 law requires flood insurance for Citizens policyholders who also carry wind coverage, regardless of flood zone. Florida’s NFIP and private flood policy count rose 12 percent from 2022 to 2025 while the other hurricane prone states fell 7 percent over the same stretch.

What Does an NFIP Policy Actually Pay For?

Residential NFIP coverage tops out at $250,000 for the structure and $100,000 for personal belongings, and contents coverage is available to renters too, not just owners. GAO is asking Congress to raise those limits and to make lenders hand buyers a flood quote before closing, with a signed disclosure if they decline it. None of that is law yet.

Why Does This Matter If You’re Already Stretched Thin?

A flood loss with no flood policy isn’t an insurance problem. It’s an equity problem. The repair bill lands on the owner, the mortgage keeps running, and the house is worth less with water damage than it was the week before. That’s one of the quieter ways a short sale file gets started, long before anyone’s missed a payment.

In other news, Florida asked Washington for the next step up on Thursday, and as of this morning, nothing’s been granted.

Is There a Foreclosure Pause After the Hurricane, and Is My County in It?

Not yet, for any of my seven counties. Florida’s request is sitting with FEMA, unapproved, and the automatic 90 day FHA pause still hasn’t started because it can’t start without that approval.

What Changed on Thursday?

Florida’s governor’s office announced it had submitted a request to the President for a Major Disaster Declaration over Hurricane Isaias. It asks for Public Assistance across 15 counties and Individual Assistance, the part that can actually reach a homeowner, across 8 of those. The release carries no dollar figure and says outright the request is still awaiting federal approval.

Why Hasn’t the 90 Day Pause Started?

I wrote about this mechanism a few days ago: HUD’s automatic 90 day FHA foreclosure pause only starts on the date of a Presidentially Declared Major Disaster Area, and that’s a bigger step than the emergency declaration Florida already has. I checked FEMA’s press release index again this morning. Nothing’s been added for Florida. The newest items are from yesterday, and they’re for Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands over a typhoon. Florida’s Isaias declaration is still sitting at the October 9 emergency level, which carries no Individual Assistance and starts no clock on anything.

Is My County Even on the List?

Of my seven counties, Duval, Clay, Nassau, St. Johns, Putnam and Flagler aren’t on any of this storm’s federal lists. Baker is the one exception, and only on the original 27 county emergency declaration from October 9. None of my seven made Thursday’s 15 county or 8 county requests. There are three different county lists in play right now between the emergency declaration, Thursday’s Public Assistance request and Thursday’s Individual Assistance request, and they’re not the same list wearing different labels.

What Can You Actually Do While This Sits in Washington?

Nothing about your loan changes while this request sits unapproved. The ordinary hardship conversation with your servicer was always available, declaration or not, and it runs through naming the damage date, what it did to your income or your house, and the options that apply to your specific loan. A declaration that hasn’t come yet has no start date to wait on.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property from storms like this one is a lot of what crosses my desk these days. Glad to talk through where either of these lands for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR, Momentum Realty, SFR (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

Why Is My Condo Worth Less Than It Was Last Year When Houses Are Going Up?

Short answer: it’s not just your condo. Florida Realtors’ own September numbers show condo prices falling across the state over the past year while house prices rose, in the same month, same state, same report. Nobody’s named a reason for that split, so I won’t invent one either.

What Actually Happened to Florida Condo Prices in September?

Florida Realtors released September and third quarter numbers October 16. The condo and townhouse median sale price statewide was $293,500, down 1.8 percent from $299,000 a year earlier. Single family homes went the other way: $415,000, up 1.2 percent, the seventh straight month of year over year gains. Same state, same month, two different markets.

Did the Condo Backlog Get Bigger or Smaller?

Smaller, which is the part that cuts against the easy explanation. Months supply of condo and townhouse inventory came in at 7.7 in September, down from 9.1 a year ago, a drop of 15.4 percent. Closed condo and townhouse sales were basically flat, 7,179 against last year, eight fewer closings statewide. New pending sales on condos were down 3.5 percent. None of that looks like a market drowning in unsold units. The price went backward anyway.

Is This Just a One-Month Blip?

Third quarter tells the same story stretched out. Condo and townhouse closed sales for the quarter were 22,664, up 3.1 percent, with a median of $295,000, unchanged from a year ago. Single family closed sales ran 65,904, up 0.2 percent, median $420,000, up 2.4 percent. Florida Realtors’ chief economist, Dr. Brad O’Connor, pointed to mortgage rates as “the biggest story for the housing market, not only in Florida but throughout the United States,” and called what’s happening “a housing market that has lost some momentum, but certainly hasn’t fallen apart.”

What Else Decides What a Lender Will Approve on a Condo?

The unit’s price is only half of it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac retired condo limited review on August 3, 2026, so a buyer who needs a loan now has to clear a full review of the whole association, not just the unit. That review looks at the association’s own finances and the estoppel figure, on top of whatever the unit itself is worth. A building that can’t clear that review is harder to sell no matter what the price does.

Why This Matters If You Owe More Than Your Condo Will Bring

If you owe more on a Florida condo than it would sell for, the only number that actually decides anything is what your specific unit closes at, and that number moved down over the last twelve months while the house across the street moved up. The price is the half most people watch. The building’s own finances and whether it clears a full lender review are the other half, and they can matter just as much to whether a sale happens at all.

In other news, a new national report puts a real number on how common a short sale actually is right now.

Can I Sell My House If I Owe More Than It’s Worth?

Yes. That’s what a short sale is: selling for less than you owe, with your lender’s sign off. And it’s a lot less common than most people assume.

What Does “Distressed Sales” Actually Mean in NAR’s Numbers?

The National Association of Realtors published September existing home sales data October 13. Buried in the detail: foreclosures and short sales together, what NAR calls distressed sales, made up 2 percent of September’s completed sales. That’s NAR’s own measure, foreclosures and short sales combined, as a share of homes that actually closed that month.

How Rare Is a Short Sale Really, Right Now?

Two out of every 100 closings in September were a foreclosure or a short sale. That’s the same 2 percent as August, and the same 2 percent as a year ago. Nothing here says fewer people are falling behind. It says the share of completed sales that end up distressed hasn’t moved. If you’ve been told the market is full of short sales and yours will just be one of a crowd, this is the number that says otherwise.

Who’s Actually Buying Right Now?

The buyer pool shifted more than the distressed share did. Individual investors and second home buyers made up 20 percent of September buyers, up from 15 percent in August and 15 percent a year ago. All cash buyers dropped to 27 percent, down from 30 percent a year ago. Median existing home price nationally was $417,500, up 1.3 percent, and the typical home sat on the market 33 days, up slightly from 31 in August. NAR’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, said “further increases in mortgage rates in recent weeks mean fewer buyers can qualify to purchase a home.”

Why This Matters If You’re Behind on Payments

A short sale on your house is still an unusual listing, not one of a hundred identical ones. And the buyer pool looking at it just picked up more investors and second home buyers than it had a month ago. Neither of those facts decides what happens with your own loan. That comes down to your own paperwork, your own lender, and the options sitting in front of you.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what I work. Happy to talk through where either of these lands for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

Will My Homeowners Insurance Go Up Because of the Hurricane?

Probably not because of this storm specifically, and that’s genuinely good news after a hurricane this size. Two outfits that rate insurance companies looked at Hurricane Isaias this week, and neither one thinks it’s big enough to move the market on its own.

What Did the Rating Agencies Actually Say?

Karen Clark & Company put the privately insured loss from Isaias at about $3 billion, covering homes, businesses, cars and business interruption together. The same morning, AM Best put out a commentary titled “Hurricane Isaias Insured Losses Likely Limited to an Earnings Event,” putting the number in the low single digit billions and saying it isn’t expected to eat into insurer surplus enough to change capacity in Florida. In AM Best’s own words, that helps the market avoid a squeeze that would otherwise hit reinsurance pricing. AM Best’s analyst, Christopher Graham, still added the caveat that matters: this “again highlights the difficult nature of operating in Florida, as insurers may wish to protect their capital.”

Why Would My Rate Go Up Anyway?

Because a rating agency’s outlook isn’t a rate filing. Rates in Florida get approved by the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation, one carrier at a time, and nothing about this week’s numbers stops an individual company from asking for more. The two agencies agree on the storm as a whole. They say nothing about what your specific carrier decides to file next quarter.

What About Citizens, the One That Can Reach You Even if You’re Not a Customer?

AM Best also flagged that Citizens, the state’s insurer of last resort, should come through this season intact. That matters more than it sounds like it should, because Citizens is the one carrier whose losses can land on you even if you’ve never held a Citizens policy, through an assessment charged across Florida policyholders generally. Citizens secured $2.82 billion in reinsurance for this season specifically so it could pay out after a 1-in-360-year hurricane without levying one. It’s carrying 254,413 policies as of this month.

So What’s the Bottom Line if You’re Already Stretched?

Premium, not falling prices, is the thing that’s been pushing current homeowners toward short sale territory. A storm that doesn’t move the market price of coverage is about the best outcome that could’ve landed on a household already stretched thin. Just keep the limit in mind: it’s a market-wide read, not a promise about your own renewal notice.

In other news, the claims aren’t showing up the way you’d expect a week after landfall, and the reason has nothing to do with how bad the damage is.

My Hurricane Damage Is Less Than My Deductible. Do I Just Pay for It Myself?

Yes, probably, and that’s one of the quietest ways a storm costs people money without ever showing up in a claims count anywhere.

Why Are So Few Claims Being Filed?

A week after landfall, several carriers are reporting claims at a fraction of their policy counts. People’s Trust Insurance had taken just over 400 claims from about 8,000 insureds in the region. Universal Property & Casualty had about 3,000 claims on roughly 20,000 policies. Citizens was sitting at 860 claims against about 8,800 policies in the ten counties hit at landfall. Matt Mercier, national director of community associations at CBIZ, gave the plain reason to Insurance Journal: “So much of what we have seen has been below the deductible.”

I walked through how Florida’s hurricane deductible actually works here on the 9th, the short version is it’s a percentage of your dwelling coverage, not a flat dollar figure, and it can run into five figures depending on your policy. A torn section of roof, a soffit, a fence and a tree removal can add up to a real repair bill and still land under that number.

What Happens When the Repair Bill Comes in Under the Deductible?

You pay for it yourself, out of your own pocket, on top of whatever else is already due that month. Doug Quinn of the American Policyholder Association, working the Panhandle this week, called it “the storm after the storm.” Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute pushed back the same week, saying “legitimate claims are not being denied.” Both are real positions from people who work this for a living, and neither one is a settled fact yet.

Does a Low Claims Count Mean the Storm Was Mild?

Depends who’s reading it. The trade press is reading a low claims count as a sign the storm came in lighter than feared, and on the numbers, that’s a fair read for the industry as a whole. For a household staring at a repair bill that didn’t clear the deductible, it can mean the opposite: a bill that has to come out of savings most families don’t have sitting around, with nothing about it showing up in anybody’s claims data. That phone call to an agent usually doesn’t happen the week of the storm. It happens months later.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I work, and distressed property from storms like this one is a big part of it. Happy to walk through what either of these means for your own situation.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

Do I Get More Time to File My Taxes After a Hurricane in Florida?

Yes, if you’re in one of the 27 named Florida counties hit by Hurricane Isaias. The IRS pushed the deadline for returns and payments that would’ve been due between October 9, 2026 and February 8, 2027 all the way out to February 8, 2027. Baker County is on that list. The other six counties I work, Duval, Clay, Nassau, St. Johns, Putnam and Flagler, are not.

I wrote about the gap between FEMA’s emergency declaration and a full major disaster declaration here Saturday, and that gap hasn’t closed. This relief comes from a different agency and it moved faster.

How Much Extra Time Did I Just Get?

The IRS announced it October 14, release FL-2026-07. Anything due on or after October 9, 2026 and before February 8, 2027 now has until February 8, 2027: individual and business returns, estimated tax payments, and payroll and certain excise returns that would’ve landed November 2 or February 1. It’s applied automatically based on the address the IRS has on file. If you’re in one of the 27 counties but your mailing address doesn’t show it, the number to call is 866-562-5227.

Today happens to be the deadline this fixed. If you had a valid extension on your 2025 return, it was due today, October 15. In the 27 counties, it’s now due February 8, 2027 instead.

Does This Cover the Payment I Already Owed?

No, and this is the part that trips people up. The IRS release says plainly that the payment tied to your 2025 return was due April 15, 2026, months before any of this, so that payment isn’t part of the relief. The filing deadline moved. That specific payment didn’t. If you owed on April 15 and haven’t paid it, interest and penalties on that balance have been running the whole time and keep running now.

Can I Deduct Hurricane Damage My Insurance Didn’t Cover?

Possibly, and you get a choice of which year’s return it lands on. The relief lets you claim a casualty loss on the return for the year the damage happened or the year before it, whichever helps more, with up to six months after the return’s due date to make that choice. Form 4684 and IRS Publication 547 walk through how. The loss has to be the part your insurance or anything else didn’t reimburse, and the FEMA number for this declaration, the one that goes on the return, is 3655-EM. This is a tax question with real dollars riding on your own paperwork, which is exactly what a CPA earns their fee on.

What If I’m Already on a Payment Plan With the IRS?

An existing installment agreement doesn’t default just because a payment is missed during this window. But the release is clear that interest and late-payment charges keep building on the balance anyway. The postponement buys you room to not get a letter. It doesn’t buy you a lower balance.

Does This Mean FEMA Help Is Finally Coming?

Not yet, and don’t mix the two up. This relief comes from the IRS, off a FEMA emergency declaration from October 9. A full major disaster declaration, the one that opens individual assistance checks and triggers the automatic FHA foreclosure pause, still hasn’t happened. FEMA’s own page for this storm still reads the way it did when I checked it here Saturday: if and when assistance is approved, it’ll be posted there. The tax clock moved on its own, six days before any FEMA money did.

Why This Matters If You’re Behind Right Now

If you’re already behind on a mortgage with storm damage stacked on top of it, you’re being asked for money by three or four parties at once, and they’re not moving at the same speed. One of them, the IRS, just gave you until February without you asking. The other one, FEMA, the one most people are actually waiting on, hasn’t moved at all. Knowing which clock actually stopped is the difference between paying the right bill first and guessing.

This is tax law, so your own numbers, your own county and your own paperwork decide what any of this does for you. A CPA or an enrolled agent signs off on that, not me.

In other news, the Mortgage Bankers Association just told its own members not to count on rates dropping next year.

Should I Wait for Rates to Drop Before I Sell My House?

Maybe not for the reason you’re hoping. The trade group that represents the lenders is forecasting the 30 year mortgage sitting above 7 percent for all of 2027, not below it.

What Did the MBA Actually Forecast?

At its annual convention in Chicago on October 11, the Mortgage Bankers Association released its 2027 forecast: the 30 year averaging 7.3 percent in the fourth quarter of this year and staying above 7 percent through next year. MBA chief economist Mike Fratantoni said rates are likely to ease off their recent highs “but will remain on a higher path than previously forecasted.” The group also expects refinance lending to drop another 17 percent next year, to 571 billion dollars, with total mortgage originations down 5 percent.

What Does That Mean for Refinancing My Way Out?

It gets harder, not easier. A plan built around waiting for rates to fall and refinancing into something affordable depends on a window the people who actually do the lending are now forecasting to shrink, not grow. That’s a forecast, not a fact, and it’s one lender who decides what happens with any specific loan. But it’s worth knowing that the trade group representing the industry just told its own members the refinance window gets smaller next year, not bigger.

What Is the MBA Saying About People Falling Behind?

Marina Walsh, who heads MBA’s industry analysis, said in the same release that “both delinquencies and foreclosures are higher than they were a year ago,” and pointed to government loans specifically. She also named student loans, credit cards and auto loans as debts where delinquency has been climbing. Her phrase for what that adds up to is “homeowner financial distress, exacerbated by stretched affordability.”

That reads like one household sliding, not four separate categories of people. The car usually goes first because it can be repossessed. The credit card goes next because nobody loses a house over a card balance. The mortgage goes last, because it’s the thing people protect the longest. The MBA is now saying out loud that the order is moving.

Why This Matters If You’re Thinking About Waiting

The most common plan for somebody behind on a mortgage is to wait it out: hold on, hope rates drop, refinance into something that fits. The trade group for the lenders themselves just forecast that plan getting harder, not easier, for all of next year. Nobody can tell you whether to sell, hold or refinance. That’s your call, and it depends on numbers only you have. But a plan that leans on rates dropping soon leans on the mortgage industry being wrong about its own forecast.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what crosses my desk. Happy to talk through where either of these lands for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

How Much Will Amendment 3 Actually Save Me on My Property Taxes?

Nothing yet, and nothing before late 2027 even if it passes. Amendment 3 goes to Florida voters on November 3, and the relief it promises doesn’t show up on a tax bill until two years from now at the earliest.

What Does Amendment 3 Actually Change?

The underlying measure is CS/HJR 1F. If voters approve it at 60 percent or more, the homestead exemption would cover the first $150,000 of assessed value starting in 2027, then the first $250,000 from 2028 on, indexed to inflation after that. That bigger exemption only applies to non-school levies. The existing $25,000 exemption against school taxes stays exactly as it is, so school taxes keep landing on most of a home’s value either way.

The cap on how fast a non-homestead property’s assessment can climb each year drops from 10 percent to 5 percent, for county, city and special district levies, not school levies. New Florida residents who weren’t permanent as of December 31, 2026 would get an exemption on the first $50,000 of assessed value for five years, then the full exemption starting their fifth year. All of it takes effect January 1, 2027.

When Would This Show Up on My Tax Bill?

Not for over a year, even in the best case. The Pinellas County Property Appraiser’s office, writing about the same amendment, puts the earliest effect on 2027 TRIM notices mailed in August and the tax bill that follows in November 2027. Nothing about this touches anyone’s bill right now.

How Much Would I Actually Save?

Depends entirely on where you live and what your local millage rate is, and nobody can give you an exact number yet. Pinellas County’s own estimate, using its 2025 countywide non-school rate of 12.2011 mills, puts the savings at roughly $1,203 for 2027 and $2,423 for 2028, off a current full homestead exemption of $51,411. That office is clear this is illustrative, not a promise. The figures assume no change in millage and no non-ad valorem assessments, and they’re Pinellas numbers, not Duval, Clay or anywhere else in Northeast Florida. Your own county appraiser’s office would have to run the same math against your own rate.

One detail that gets missed: the 5 percent cap limits how fast your assessed value can grow. It doesn’t cap your tax rate. The city, county and special districts still set their own millage, so a slower-growing assessment doesn’t by itself guarantee a smaller bill.

Is This Actually Going to Pass?

Unclear. A poll from NBC6 and Telemundo 51, published October 7 and covering 625 registered Florida voters surveyed between September 28 and October 1, found 55 percent support statewide, below the 60 percent threshold the amendment needs. Southeast Florida came back lower still, at 48 percent yes against 31 percent no and 21 percent undecided. Among the no voters, 55 percent pointed to cuts in local services as their reason, which tracks with the Legislature’s own Revenue Estimating Conference putting the hit to local non-school revenue at roughly $4.95 billion in the first year and $8.78 billion in the second.

Why This Matters If You’re Behind Right Now

It doesn’t, not yet. Property tax sits alongside insurance, the HOA bill and the roof as one of the costs that keeps climbing on a household whose income didn’t move with it. Amendment 3, if it passes, is relief that starts showing up on a bill mailed in 2027. Anyone behind on a mortgage today is dealing with this month’s numbers, not next year’s ballot measure.

In other news, Florida’s insurance regulator just opened the first public window into how many hurricane claims from Isaias are actually getting paid.

How Many Hurricane Insurance Claims Actually Get Denied in Florida?

Nobody can say yet, including the state. Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation issued its first data call on Isaias October 12, and the first insurer filing was due at noon today.

What Is the State Actually Collecting?

Every insurer writing homeowners, mobile home or private flood coverage in Florida has to file a Catastrophe Reporting Form twice this week, once today and again Thursday. The form asks for the number of claims reported, how many are still open with or without a payment made, how many are closed with or without payment, and the county and zip code tied to each one. Where a company can give a reason a claim closed without payment, it’s supposed to.

That closed-without-payment column, broken out by county, is the piece that doesn’t exist anywhere else right now. A denial today is a letter in somebody’s mailbox. Once this data comes in, it’s a line in a filing the state can see and, eventually, might publish.

Will Any of This Become Public?

Possibly, not automatically. OIR’s own language says it may use the aggregated numbers in public reports, and it has done exactly that for past storms, publishing total estimated insured losses by name: Ian at just over $22.2 billion, Irma at nearly $20.7 billion, Milton at $5.6 billion. Those are loss totals, not claim counts or denial rates, and there’s no Isaias figure yet because the first filing is due today.

Why This Matters If You’re Waiting on a Check

If your claim has been sitting with no answer, you’ve had nothing to measure that against. This is the mechanism that eventually produces something to compare it to, county by county. A roof that never gets repaired because the claim stalled doesn’t stay a home-maintenance issue. It becomes the thing a lender’s appraiser flags when a house goes up for sale, the same way an unfixed roof did when I wrote about hurricane claim deadlines here Sunday.

Also of note today, the state widened who’s allowed to work on storm-damaged roofs in 30 counties, and almost none of them are in my own market.

Do I Need a Licensed Contractor to Put a Tarp on My Roof?

No, and that was already true before this storm. Florida law exempts installing a non-permanent emergency tarp from needing a roofing license. What changed this week is everything around that tarp.

What Did Florida Just Change for Roof Repair?

Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation issued two emergency orders, dated October 11, covering 30 named counties hit by Isaias. In those counties, a general, building or residential contractor can now do roofing work directly instead of subcontracting it out, and registered contractors can work outside their normal geographic territory. Electrical and alarm contractors got the same geographic exemption. HOA and condo board directors got their certification and continuing education requirements suspended for 30 days. A business can remove water-damaged materials without a mold remediation license, as long as it isn’t holding itself out as a mold remediator for hire.

Does This Apply to My County?

Only Baker, out of my own seven. Duval, Clay, Nassau, St. Johns, Putnam and Flagler aren’t on DBPR’s list of 30, which doesn’t line up with FEMA’s 27 or the Governor’s either, as I’ve already pointed out. If you’re in one of my six uncovered counties, none of this changed who’s allowed to touch your roof.

What’s the Catch?

The usual license check tells you less this month than it did last month, in the counties where this applies. DBPR still publishes its own tools for checking who you’re hiring: a license verification lookup, a page of red flags for unlicensed activity, and a list of known scam listings. A deposit handed to someone who never shows up again turns a repairable roof into a bill that doesn’t go away, on top of whatever else a household is already carrying.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what I work. Happy to talk through any of this.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

The Fed Raised Rates Again. Does My Mortgage Payment Go Up?

No, not if your mortgage is a fixed rate. The number that actually moves sits on your credit card and your home equity line, and that’s the one worth watching.

The Federal Open Market Committee met September 15 and 16 and voted 12 to 0 to raise the federal funds rate a quarter point, to a range of 3.75 to 4.00 percent. The minutes came out October 7, and most participants are already pointing at another increase before the year is out. Separately, Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the 30 year fixed mortgage rate at 7.40 percent as of October 8, up from 7.28 percent the week before.

Does the Fed Control My Mortgage Rate?

No. The federal funds rate is an overnight rate the Fed sets for banks lending to each other. Your 30 year mortgage rate gets set in the bond market and moves on its own schedule. They can move together or apart, and a quarter point from the Fed doesn’t translate into a quarter point on a mortgage note.

What Actually Changes in My Budget?

Not the mortgage, if it’s fixed. That rate is written into the note and stays there no matter what the Fed does this month or next. What moves is the variable side: home equity lines and credit cards are priced off the prime rate, and prime tracks the Fed’s target directly. An adjustable rate mortgage moves too, but on its own index and its own reset date, not the day the Fed meets.

Why Does This Matter If I’m Already Behind?

Because the Fed moving rates usually isn’t a mortgage event for somebody already stretched thin. It’s a minimum payment event. The credit card and the equity line payment go up, and those are often the money quietly covering the mortgage every month. The mortgage tends to go unpaid after the card maxes out, not before. If the Committee follows through on another increase before the year ends, that same pressure lands again on the same household, on the variable side, while the mortgage payment sits unchanged and looks fine on paper.

The Committee meets again October 27 and 28.

In other news, Fannie Mae announced a sale of delinquent loans this week, and the conditions attached to it matter if you’re behind and haven’t heard from anyone yet.

I’m Behind on My Mortgage and Nobody’s Offered Me Anything. Can They Just Foreclose?

Usually no, but it depends on who holds your loan, and there’s a carve-out that catches people who don’t know about it.

Fannie Mae announced on October 8 its latest sale of non-performing loans, roughly 1,217 deeply delinquent loans totaling 259.9 million dollars, plus a smaller Community Impact Pool of loans in the Dallas to Fort Worth area. Bids close October 27 and November 3.

Does the Buyer Have to Offer Me Something First?

Yes, on loans inside this particular sale. Fannie Mae’s release requires whoever buys these loans to offer delinquent borrowers “a waterfall of loss mitigation options, including loan modifications, which may include principal forgiveness, prior to initiating foreclosure.” Principal forgiveness is permitted, not promised, and nothing here guarantees any specific borrower a specific outcome. The buyer also has to honor any loss mitigation already in progress at the time of closing.

What If I’ve Already Moved Out?

Then the protection is gone. The requirement doesn’t apply to a property that’s vacant or condemned at closing. Moving out because it feels like it’s over is exactly what removes the obligation that would have made somebody offer something first.

This only applies to loans inside a sale like this one, not to every delinquent mortgage in the country. Who actually owns a given loan, and whether any of this rides with it, is a question for the servicer and for a lawyer. I’m not either one.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what crosses my desk. Happy to talk through where either of these lands for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

How Long Do I Have to File a Hurricane Damage Claim in Florida?

One year. That’s the deadline Florida law sets for filing a hurricane insurance claim, and it runs from the night Hurricane Isaias made landfall, not from the day you noticed the roof.

Isaias came ashore near Destin on Friday night, October 9, at 105 mph. I covered what that storm did to FHA foreclosures and the federal disaster declaration here Saturday. Today’s deadline is a different clock, and this one belongs to your insurance policy rather than your mortgage.

How Long Do I Have to File a Hurricane Claim in Florida?

One year from the date of loss. Florida Statute 627.70132 sets that deadline for both an initial claim and a reopened one, and for a hurricane, the date of loss is the date of landfall, not the day you got around to calling your agent. For Isaias, that puts the deadline at October 9, 2027.

The statute also says notice has to follow the terms of the policy, so the one year mark is the outer wall, not the whole fence. A policy that requires prompt notice still requires prompt notice. The one year doesn’t buy you the right to wait.

What If the Payment Wasn’t Enough?

You get more time, but less of it than the first claim. A supplemental claim, one that reopens a settled claim because the money didn’t cover the repair, is barred unless you give notice within 18 months of the date of loss. For Isaias, that’s April 9, 2028.

Does My Condo’s Special Assessment Run on the Same Clock?

No, and this is the one most people miss. Loss assessment coverage under a condo policy has its own rule: notice is due by the later of one year after the date of loss or 90 days after the association votes to levy the assessment, and never more than three years after the date of loss. An association often doesn’t vote on a storm assessment until well after the water’s gone, which is exactly why this clock runs longer.

Is My Flood Claim on the Same Deadline?

No, and mixing these two up is where people actually lose money. Wind damage and flood damage are two different claims on two different policies. The National Flood Insurance Program’s standard policy requires a signed and sworn proof of loss within 60 days of the loss, nowhere close to the one year window on the wind side. A storm that brings both surge and wind hands you two files running on two different clocks, and the slower clock, the wind claim, is usually the one people remember to file.

What If My Insurer Is Slow to Respond?

They’re on a clock too, just a shorter one. Florida law gives an insurer 7 days to acknowledge a claim, 7 more to start investigating once they have your proof of loss, 30 days for a physical inspection, and 60 days after notice to pay or deny. A declared state of emergency, which the Governor issued for this storm, lets the state’s insurance regulator add up to 30 more days to that 60. Your own one year deadline carries no such exception. The only thing that pauses it under the statute is a servicemember deployed to a combat zone.

What Does This Mean If You’re Already Behind?

A roof that never got fixed isn’t a cosmetic problem when a house goes up for sale. It’s a financing problem, and on a short sale it lands straight in the lender’s own valuation of the property. A missed claim deadline means the repair bill sits with the homeowner alone, on a house a buyer can’t get financed. The homeowners who end up needing a short sale two years after a storm are often the ones who missed one of these deadlines, or who filed the wind claim and never filed the flood one.

Distressed property is most of what I work out of Jacksonville these days. If any of this touches your own policy, I’m glad to talk through it.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR®, Momentum Realty, SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

My County Just Got Declared a Disaster Area. Does That Stop My Foreclosure?

No, not this one, and the reason is a paperwork distinction most coverage of this storm skipped. There are two different kinds of federal declaration, and only one of them pauses an FHA foreclosure. Florida got the one that doesn’t.

What’s the Difference Between an Emergency Declaration and a Disaster Declaration?

FEMA announced on October 9 that an emergency declaration was approved for Florida over Hurricane Isaias, covering 27 counties. An emergency declaration authorizes FEMA to send equipment and resources and to fund emergency protective measures at 75 percent. It doesn’t carry the weight a lot of people assume it does.

I wrote about the mechanism underneath this a few days ago, before the storm even had a name: HUD pauses FHA foreclosures automatically for 90 days, but only starting on the date of a Presidentially Declared Major Disaster Area declaration. That’s a bigger, separate step from an emergency declaration, and Florida doesn’t have one for Isaias. FEMA’s own press index on October 10 shows major disaster declarations approved the same week for Hawaii and Utah. Florida’s Isaias item is still sitting at emergency.

Fannie Mae’s bar is higher still. A servicer can grant an initial three month forbearance without a full conversation with the homeowner first, but only if the property sits in a FEMA declared disaster area that also carries an Individual Assistance designation. Florida’s current declaration doesn’t carry that designation, so that shortcut is off too.

Does My County Being on the List Change Anything?

Only if you’re in Baker County. That’s the only one of my seven counties on FEMA’s list of 27. Duval, Clay, Nassau, St. Johns, Putnam and Flagler aren’t on it. Florida’s own state of emergency is a separate order from the Governor’s office, covering a not-quite-identical set of counties, so check your own county against the actual order rather than against a headline.

What’s Still Open to You?

Nothing about your loan changed with yesterday’s news. The ordinary forbearance request was always available, regardless of any federal declaration, and it runs through a phone call to your servicer: the date of the damage, what it did to your income or your house, and the hardship options that apply to your specific loan. FHA loans carry protections a conventional loan doesn’t, and most people can’t say offhand which type they have. That’s something a servicer can answer in one call.

In other news, Freddie Mac sold off $428 million in delinquent loans this week, in four pools covering 1,968 loans.

My Mortgage Got Sold to a Company I’ve Never Heard Of. Do I Lose the Deal I Made?

No. These were loans already 15 to 21 months behind on average, and about 51 percent of that balance belonged to loans that had already been modified once and fell behind again afterward. Freddie Mac requires whoever buys a pool like this to honor the terms of any existing loss mitigation agreement. A modification, a repayment plan, a trial payment plan, none of it evaporates because the loan changed hands. The current servicers named in the release are Select Portfolio Servicing, Shellpoint, Selene Finance and Rushmore Servicing, and settlement on the sale is expected in December.

What Changes When the Letter Arrives?

The agreement already in place stays in place. What’s worth holding onto is your own proof of what’s already been paid and a copy of any agreement you signed, since the name on the account is about to change. Freddie Mac’s release says purchasers have to complete any loss mitigation action already in motion, not restart it. A servicing transfer notice is the separate document that actually tells you who to call once the sale settles. That notice is the one that changes anything, not the news of the sale itself.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what crosses my desk. Questions about your own situation are always welcome.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

How Much Do I Have to Pay Out of Pocket to Fix My House After a Hurricane?

Whatever your hurricane deductible comes out to on your own policy, and that window opened statewide this morning, not just where the storm actually makes landfall.

A Hurricane Warning went up on the Florida Panhandle overnight for Hurricane Isaias, now at 105 mph over the central Gulf. Florida’s rule for when the hurricane deductible switches on doesn’t care where that warning sits on the map. The state’s own insurance department says the deductible period “begins at the time a hurricane watch or warning is issued for any part of Florida by the National Hurricane Center.” Any part of the state, not your county specifically. So the window is open everywhere this morning, Duval, Clay, Nassau, St. Johns, Baker, Putnam and Flagler included, even though none of them sit inside a watch or warning of their own.

What Turns the Hurricane Deductible On?

One warning, anywhere in Florida. That’s the entire trigger. It doesn’t matter if the storm ever reaches your roof. Once the National Hurricane Center posts a watch or warning for any part of the state, every homeowner’s policy in Florida is running on its hurricane deductible instead of its regular one, whether the wind ever shows up or not.

How Much Does It Actually Cost?

More than most people’s regular deductible, and the gap can run into five figures. Florida law requires insurers to offer hurricane deductible choices of $500, 2 percent, 5 percent or 10 percent of the policy’s dwelling coverage limit. On a house insured for $400,000 of dwelling coverage, 2 percent is $8,000. 5 percent is $20,000. 10 percent is $40,000. If the dwelling is insured for less than $500,000, state law caps the hurricane deductible at that 10 percent figure. Between $1 million and $3 million of dwelling coverage, an insurer can offer 3 percent instead of 2 percent.

That’s the number due before an insurance company pays anything on wind damage from a hurricane. The state’s insurance department puts it plainly: “You are responsible for the hurricane deductible before insurance payments will be made.”

Does It Apply Every Time a Storm Hits?

Only once a calendar year, and that part actually works in a homeowner’s favor. The hurricane deductible applies “on an annual basis to all covered hurricane losses that occur during the calendar year.” If a second hurricane hits later this year, the deductible on that one is whichever is smaller: what’s left of the hurricane deductible already paid, or the regular non-hurricane deductible. Nobody pays a full hurricane deductible twice in one year.

Does It Stack on Top of My Regular Deductible?

No. It replaces it. The rule is direct about that too: “When a hurricane deductible is applied, no other deductible under the policy may be applied.” One deductible applies to a hurricane claim, never two.

What Does a $20,000 Deductible Actually Mean for a House?

It means the math decides whether a claim gets filed at all. A house with $14,000 of wind damage and a 5 percent deductible on $400,000 of dwelling coverage has no claim worth filing, because the deductible is bigger than the damage. The repair bill belongs to the homeowner outright, or the roof stays the way it is.

That arithmetic doesn’t ask whether somebody was already behind on the mortgage before the wind picked up. It just runs. A repair that doesn’t get made can turn into a lender’s insurance requirement that doesn’t get met, which can turn into a house that won’t appraise, and by the time anyone calls an agent the conversation has usually shifted from fixing to selling.

What Should You Check on Your Own Policy?

The dwelling coverage limit on the declarations page, and which of the deductible options the policy actually carries. That number against that coverage is what the hurricane deductible costs on that specific house. It’s printed on the policy already. Nobody has to guess at it.

In other news, the market a seller is actually working against right now runs a lot slower than the clock a foreclosure case runs on.

How Long Will It Take to Sell My House in Jacksonville Right Now?

Longer than most of the court dates a distressed homeowner is racing. Momentum Realty’s own research desk tracks live inventory across Northeast Florida, and every county in the footprint is sitting deep in buyer’s market territory this week: Duval at 7.0 months of supply, Nassau at 8.9, and Clay, St. Johns and Flagler all around 9.1.

What Does “Months of Supply” Actually Measure?

How long it would take to sell off everything currently listed at the pace homes are actually closing right now, not how long any one house takes to sell. Duval has 2,377 active listings against 1,082 pending. St. Johns has 1,546 active against 825 pending. Those are standing numbers off this week’s data, not a forecast.

Why Does That Number Matter if I’m Facing a Foreclosure Date?

Because a foreclosure sale date doesn’t wait for the market to clear. Florida law puts that sale 20 to 35 days after a final judgment, the same clock covered here Wednesday on HOA foreclosures. A house listed the week a final judgment lands, in a market running seven to nine months of supply, is not closing before that date. The houses that sell ahead of a court date are the ones listed while there are still months on the clock, not weeks.

Does a Price Cut Mean Something Different in This Kind of Market?

Yes. In a market running this deep, a price cut isn’t giving something up. It’s what moves a listing ahead of the other 1,546 sitting in St. Johns County, or the 2,377 in Duval. Pricing to beat a court date and pricing to recover every dollar of equity are two different strategies, and only one of them is working with the clock a foreclosure case actually runs on.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what crosses my desk. Happy to talk through where either of these lands for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

A Hurricane Is Coming and I’m Supposed to Close on My House. What Happens to the Sale?

It depends on whether your lender decides the storm might have changed the house. On a conventional loan backed by Fannie Mae, that call belongs to the lender, not to you and not to whoever’s buying from you. If the house needs another look before the loan can be delivered, the closing waits on that look, not on the date everybody signed.

The storm sitting in the Gulf was a tropical storm as of last night. The National Hurricane Center’s 2 a.m. outlook today bumped it to a hurricane, Isaias, the first of the 2026 Atlantic season. The warnings posted on Florida ground this morning run from the Mississippi line to the Bay and Gulf county line in the Panhandle, with landfall expected late Friday or early Saturday. Northeast Florida isn’t in any watch or warning as of this morning. The rule below doesn’t care where you live. It cares whether the house in your contract sits anywhere the storm actually reached.

What Happens to Your Closing If a Storm Hits Before It?

Fannie Mae writes it into section B2-3-05 of its Selling Guide, Properties Affected by a Disaster. When a property may have been in a storm’s path, the lender has to take what the guide calls “prudent and reasonable actions to determine whether the condition of the property may have materially changed.” If what’s wrong is uninsured, or it touches the safety or the structure of the house, the property has to get repaired before the loan can be delivered to Fannie Mae. On a condo, both the unit and the building get checked.

Who Decides If the House Needs a New Look?

The lender does. Not you, not the buyer, not the seller. Fannie Mae’s guide puts that call in the lender’s hands directly: whether an inspection or a new appraisal is needed is the lender’s decision to make, not a negotiation between the two sides of the contract. You can have a signed contract and a closing date circled on the calendar and still be waiting on somebody else’s read of a roof two counties away.

Does This Apply to Every Loan?

No, and it’s a different rule from the one covered here Tuesday, which was about FHA’s foreclosure moratorium and Fannie Mae’s disaster payment deferral. Those two cover a loan that’s already behind on payments after a disaster. This one covers a sale that hasn’t closed yet. Fannie Mae’s guide governs conventional loans only. FHA, VA, and Freddie Mac weren’t checked for this post, and nothing here says what their closing rules require. Which kind of loan is actually funding the purchase decides whether any of this applies, and that’s one phone call to the lender or the closing agent.

What Does This Mean If You’re Selling Because You Have To?

The lender’s extra look doesn’t pause anything else. If you’re behind on the mortgage and selling to get out from under it, the arrears keep running while the lender decides whether to send someone out. The HOA keeps billing. Nothing about what pushed the sale in the first place takes a break because somebody wants another look at the roof before Friday. The wait between a signed contract and a closing that actually happens is where a bad situation tends to get worse, not better.

None of this means the sale falls apart. It means the date on the contract and the date the loan actually funds aren’t the same thing, and the gap between them is the lender’s call, not yours.

Jacksonville is where I work, and distressed property is most of what crosses my desk these days. Happy to talk through where any of this actually lands for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

How Long Can I Go Without Paying My HOA Dues Before My House Is Foreclosed On?

There’s no set number of missed payments that triggers it. An association doesn’t need a certain number of unpaid bills to pile up, and it doesn’t need your mortgage to be in default either. Once it records a lien for what you owe, Florida law lets it foreclose that lien the same way a bank forecloses a mortgage.

I read that off Duval County’s own public notices this morning. The Jacksonville Daily Record publishes the Notice of Sale listings for foreclosures headed to auction here, and today’s list held 23 of them. Four were filed by a homeowner or condo association rather than a bank or servicer. One more was a construction lien foreclosure brought by a painting contractor. The rest came from mortgage lenders.

How Does an HOA Foreclosure Actually Get to a Sale Date?

The same way a mortgage foreclosure does. Florida law lets an association “bring an action in its name to foreclose a lien for assessments in the same manner in which a mortgage of real property is foreclosed.” Once a court enters a final judgment, it sets a sale date, and state law requires that date fall somewhere between 20 and 35 days after the judgment. The notice of that sale then has to run in a local paper for two consecutive weeks before the auction happens. That’s exactly what’s sitting on the Daily Record’s site right now: 23 notices, sale dates stretching from October 14 to December 14, all auctioned online through the Duval clerk’s site at 11 a.m.

Does It Matter if I’m Current on My Mortgage?

No. The mortgage and the association dues are two separate debts to two separate creditors, and each one has its own road to a sale date. Somebody who’s never missed a mortgage payment in their life can still be looking at a foreclosure sale over unpaid dues, because the lien statute doesn’t ask whether the mortgage is current. It only asks whether the assessments are paid.

Why Doesn’t the Association Just Let the Mortgage Lender Handle It?

Because of where the association’s lien sits in line. An association’s lien is effective once it’s recorded, but a first mortgage recorded earlier still comes ahead of it. If a lender ends up taking the house back, state law caps what it owes the association at whichever is smaller: twelve months of assessments, or one percent of the original mortgage amount. So an association that forecloses can end up holding a house with somebody else’s mortgage still attached to it, and collecting on that mortgage is not its problem to solve. That’s not a shortcut and it’s not mercy. It’s an association weighing whether foreclosing is even worth it against what it might actually recover, which is part of why these cases don’t always move as fast as a bank’s.

Where Can I See a Sale Date Before It Happens?

On the public record, same as anyone else. The notice runs in the paper for two weeks ahead of the auction, and the sale itself happens on the clerk’s own website. Nothing about that process is hidden. What it actually means for a given house, how much time is really left, what the judgment covers, whether anything can still be done, comes down to the case file and the documents behind it, and that’s a conversation for an attorney, not a blog post.

In other news, ICE’s October Mortgage Monitor landed this week with a number worth knowing if your rate isn’t fixed for life.

How Much Can My Mortgage Payment Go Up When My Rate Adjusts?

For one specific group, a lot. About 74,000 homeowners who took out seven year adjustable loans back in 2020 are hitting their first rate reset now, and ICE’s median estimate for that group is a payment jump of $1,066 a month, 36 percent higher than before.

ICE counts 3.1 million active adjustable rate loans right now, the most in five and a half years, though that’s still only 5.6 percent of all active mortgages. About 1.05 million have already reset once. Roughly 150,000 more are scheduled to reset sometime in 2026, another 180,000 in 2027, and about 155,000 in 2028. For loans that already passed their first reset, the swing is usually smaller: a quarter point move in the underlying rate works out to around $14 a month for the typical borrower, closer to $53 on loans written more recently. Home equity lines run a similar math, a $9 a month move on the typical balance for the same quarter point change.

What’s the One Thing Worth Checking on Your Own Loan?

Whether your rate is fixed for the life of the loan, and if it isn’t, the date it first changes. That date is already printed in your note. It’s not a surprise waiting to happen, it’s a deadline you can read today. A refinance, a sale while there’s still equity, or just a conversation with the servicer, all of that is easier to work through before the payment changes than after.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what crosses my desk. Happy to walk through where either of these actually lands for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call is easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

Can I Still Get Homeowners Insurance With a Storm Coming?

Yes, as of Monday morning. The National Hurricane Center put the seven day formation odds on a system in the southwestern Gulf at 50 percent, up from 40 percent the afternoon before, and the 48 hour odds moved off zero to 10 percent. Nothing is under a watch or a warning anywhere in Florida yet. That’s the whole window, and it’s open right now.

What Actually Shuts the Door?

Not the storm. The watch.

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state backed carrier, publishes its own rule on this, and it’s one sentence: agents can’t bind new coverage, or any increase to existing coverage, once a tropical storm or hurricane watch or warning is issued for any part of Florida, regardless of the policy’s effective date.

Three parts of that are easy to miss. A watch posted for the Panhandle freezes new business in Jacksonville too, because the trigger is a watch anywhere in the state, not a storm near you. Asking for a policy that starts next month doesn’t get around it either, since the bind is what stops, not the start date. And it covers more than new policies. If coverage got trimmed down over the summer to make a payment work, it can’t go back up once a watch is posted. Citizens says it can still process whatever was already submitted before the freeze started, so what’s in the queue moves, and what isn’t waits.

Does This Apply to Every Insurance Company?

Only confirmed for Citizens. Private carriers set their own binding rules, and Citizens’ rule says nothing about what a private company will or won’t do. If a policy or an application is sitting with a private carrier, that company’s own rule is the one that actually governs it.

What Happens if Coverage Lapses Instead of Getting Fixed?

The mortgage doesn’t just sit there and wait. Somewhere in the closing documents is a clause requiring the property to stay insured, and if it doesn’t, the servicer can buy a policy and bill the homeowner for it. That’s force placed insurance. It costs more than a policy bought directly, because it protects the lender’s interest in the building, not the people living in it. The CFPB requires advance notice before it happens, but the notice doesn’t change the price.

From there it’s the same mechanic that turns a missed insurance bill into a bigger mortgage payment. The premium lands in escrow, escrow comes up short, and the servicer spreads that shortage across the coming payments. The bill that got skipped to save a few hundred dollars comes back bigger, attached to the one payment it was supposed to protect.

Where Does This Leave Things Right Now?

Could still be nothing. NHC’s own language is “marginal” conditions and development that’s “possible,” not a forecast that this becomes a named storm or that it reaches Florida at all. But the rule that actually matters here doesn’t wait on either one. It triggers on a watch, and a watch can go up for a part of the state nobody in Jacksonville is standing in.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what I work. Questions about your own situation are always welcome.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR®, Momentum Realty, SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

I Lost My Job and Can’t Pay My Mortgage. What Do I Do?

On an FHA loan, there’s a specific ask that actually works: tell the servicer the hardship is job loss, not just a missed payment, and ask for the Special Forbearance for Unemployment by name. HUD requires the servicer to put that option on the table first, before it reviews anything else, when unemployment is the reason you’re behind. Off an FHA loan, the ask still matters. It just doesn’t come with that same guarantee attached.

Why Is This Coming Up Now?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the September jobs report Friday, and it’s a weak one. Payrolls rose by 29,000. BLS describes both that number and the 4.2 percent unemployment rate as having “changed little” from the month before. That’s the headline read.

The revisions are the real story underneath it. July, first reported as a gain of 21,000, got revised down by 31,000 into a loss of 10,000. August came down too, 29,000 lower than first reported, to a gain of 133,000. The average monthly gain over the prior year runs 45,000, so two of the last three months turned out weaker than first reported once the updated numbers landed. 7.1 million people are counted as unemployed right now, and 1.9 million of them, 27.1 percent, have been out of work 27 weeks or more.

None of that says how many people newly lost a job this month. It says how many are sitting in long-term unemployment right now, and a mortgage payment doesn’t wait on that distinction.

What Does HUD Actually Require?

One sentence, and it’s written for exactly this situation. HUD’s Mortgagee Letter 2024-02 says it plainly: “If the Borrower’s financial hardship is due to unemployment regardless of occupancy status, the Mortgagee must offer the SFB-Unemployment to eligible Borrowers prior to reviewing the Borrower for a COVID-19 Recovery Home Retention Option.” SFB-Unemployment is HUD’s own name for the Special Forbearance for Unemployment. Translated: on an FHA loan, if a lost job is the reason you’re behind, the servicer has to put that specific forbearance on the table first, before moving you into any other review.

HUD rewrote a long list of loss mitigation rules in a newer letter, Mortgagee Letter 2026-08, with servicers required to be running on it since September 21. That letter doesn’t mention unemployment or forbearance anywhere in it, checked directly against the document. So the 2024 commitment on job loss hasn’t moved, and asking for it by name is still the right first step on an FHA loan.

What If My Loan Isn’t FHA?

Then there’s no single sentence guaranteeing an order of operations, and what’s on the table depends on the loan’s own investor and servicer. The ask is still worth making. Tell the servicer the hardship is a lost job, not a payment that’s late for no stated reason, and find out what forbearance or modification options exist specifically for that. A servicer working a job-loss hardship usually has more to offer than one working a payment that’s late with no explanation attached.

Does This Change Anything for Jacksonville Specifically?

The margin here was already thin before any of this. Redfin’s own affordability model, published August 5 on June 2026 data, puts the income needed to afford a typical Jacksonville home at $104,004, assuming the model’s own 15 percent down and a payment capped at 30 percent of income. Median local income is $88,715, which under that same math works out to 35.2 percent of income going to the house payment, above the 30 percent Redfin treats as affordable. Miami needs more, $152,135 against a median income of $77,854, so Jacksonville isn’t the state’s worst case. It’s still a household with little room left before a paycheck stops.

That’s a model, not a fact about any one household’s actual budget. But it’s the backdrop a lost paycheck lands on here. There usually wasn’t much slack in the payment to begin with.

What’s Worth Doing This Week?

Worth finding out what kind of loan is on the mortgage before anything else. On an FHA loan, asking for the Special Forbearance for Unemployment by name, and getting the answer in writing, is the one thing HUD actually requires the servicer to offer first. Off FHA, worth asking what options exist specifically for a job-loss hardship, rather than letting the call default to a generic missed-payment review.

Jacksonville is my market, and distressed property, now increasingly the job-loss kind, is most of what crosses my desk. Questions about your own file are always welcome.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR®, Momentum Realty, SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

Can I Refinance to Lower My Mortgage Payment if I’m Already Behind?

Usually no, not in practice. Most lenders want a loan current before they’ll even look at a refinance application, and this week’s rate move makes refinancing a weaker tool anyway, even for homeowners who’d otherwise qualify.

What Did Mortgage Rates Do This Week?

Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the 30 year fixed rate at 7.28 percent on October 1, up a quarter point from 7.03 the week before and up from 6.95 on September 17. That’s three straight weekly increases, and the quarter point move is the biggest of the three. A year ago the same survey read 6.34 percent.

Why Are Refinance Applications Falling So Fast?

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s own applications survey, covering the week ending September 25, found total applications down 6.0 percent. The Refinance Index alone fell 9 percent on the week and sits 56 percent below where it was the same week a year ago. Purchase applications fell too, down 4 percent seasonally adjusted and 14 percent below a year ago unadjusted. Government refinances fell 13 percent in that single week, with FHA and VA applications both down by double digits.

MBA’s own average contract rate on 30 year conforming applications climbed to 7.30 percent from 7.12, what the association’s deputy chief economist Joel Kan called the sixth consecutive weekly increase and the highest rate on that survey since November 2023. That’s MBA’s number on actual applications, a different measurement than Freddie Mac’s rate survey, and the two shouldn’t get folded together. Adjustable rate loans picked up some of the gap: they made up 10.3 percent of applications, the highest share since October 2025, with ARM rates running roughly 80 basis points under fixed.

Does Being Behind Actually Stop a Refinance?

In practice, usually. A lender underwriting a refinance wants to see the loan in good standing, and most guidelines call for current payments before an application moves forward at all. So a homeowner who’s already missed payments typically isn’t choosing whether 7.28 percent is worth it. They’re looking at a door that’s already closed, regardless of the rate behind it.

Does My Loan Type Change What’s Available?

Yes, and it’s the detail most people never check. FHA loans come with workout options conventional loans don’t, loss mitigation reviews and trial payment plans among them. Cotality, a property data firm, published an analysis on September 23 looking at which debts people stop paying first. Their numbers show Florida’s FHA delinquency share moving from 4.3 percent in August 2025 to 6.36 percent in March 2026, a relative increase the firm describes as nearly 48 percent over those seven months. That reading only runs through March, so it’s six months older than this week’s rate data, but it points at the same group: FHA borrowers, the ones with more workout options than most people realize they have.

Cotality’s chief economist Selma Hepp framed the broader pattern in a way worth sitting with. People don’t stop paying the mortgage first. They run up the credit card, pull from savings, drain whatever cash is left, and the mortgage is usually the last bill in the house to break. By the time somebody’s three months behind, the strain’s been building somewhere else in the budget for a while already.

If Refinancing Isn’t on the Table, What Is?

A homeowner who’s behind is usually choosing between three things: work something out with the servicer, sell the house, or let it go to foreclosure. This week’s rate move narrows the middle option too. The buyer who’d purchase that house is borrowing at the same 7.28 percent, which is part of why purchase applications are running 14 percent below last year. Fewer buyers at the table means a thinner pool of offers, and on a house with little equity, a thinner pool is what turns an ordinary sale into a short sale.

Might wanna start by finding out what loan type is actually on the mortgage before ruling anything out. The workout options tied to an FHA loan look nothing like the ones tied to a conventional one, and most homeowners have never had a reason to learn the difference until now.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what I work. Questions about your own file are always welcome.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

Are Houses Still Selling in Jacksonville?

Yes, and by several measures it’s easier here right now than almost anywhere else in the country.

Realtor.com published its September numbers yesterday morning, and the national read is rough. One in five listings cut its price last month, the highest share for any month since October 2022 and the highest for a September since 2018. Mortgage rates climbed back over 7 percent for the first time since January 2025. Nationally, the number of homes under contract fell 4.1 percent from a year ago, the steepest drop since March 2025.

Jacksonville went the other direction on almost every one of those same measures.

What’s Actually Different Here?

Active listings in the Jacksonville metro fell 13.7 percent from a year ago, the steepest drop of any of the fifty largest metros Realtor.com tracks. Price cuts here actually went down, not up: 24.8 percent of listings got a reduction last month, 1.3 points lower than a year ago, while the national share climbed. And time on market here fell by about 10 days compared to last September, the biggest drop anywhere on that list.

Median list price in Jacksonville sits at $379,000, down 3.9 percent from a year ago. Nationally it’s $419,250, down 1.4 percent. Both markets have prices coming down. Jacksonville’s drop is just bigger, and it’s happening alongside fewer homes competing for buyers rather than more.

Does Fewer Listings Mean Fewer People Selling?

Not necessarily. The 13.7 percent drop is a count of what’s active on the market right now, not a count of how many people tried to sell. New listings in Jacksonville fell too, by 6.8 percent, so some of it is fewer people putting homes up in the first place. But a listing also leaves the active count when it sells. With time on market here running shorter than it was, a chunk of that shrinking inventory is houses that found buyers rather than houses that got pulled.

Why Did Rates Jump Back Over 7 Percent?

Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of new purchase loans printed 7.03 percent for the week of September 24, up from 6.66 at the end of August. That’s the first reading above 7 since January 2025. Realtor.com estimates that move alone took about $11,500 off what a buyer on a fixed monthly budget can actually afford to borrow. A higher rate doesn’t just make somebody’s own mortgage cost more. It also shrinks the pool of buyers who can afford any given house, nationally and here.

So What Does This Mean If You’re Trying to Sell?

Somebody behind on payments usually has one question ahead of everything else: will this house actually sell, and will it sell in time. Nationally, the answer right now leans toward slower and more price cuts. In Jacksonville, there’s less competing inventory than a year ago, homes are coming off the market faster, and sellers here needed to cut price less often last month than they did the September before.

None of that guarantees any one house sells on any particular timeline. Rates are higher than they were a year ago everywhere, including here, and a seller still has to price for the buyers who can actually qualify at 7 percent. But the room between listed and sold looks different in Jacksonville than it does in most of the rest of the country right now, and that’s worth knowing before assuming the national headlines apply to your own address.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what I work. Questions about your own file are always welcome.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR, Momentum Realty, SFR (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

Will the Bank Agree to a Short Sale?

Sometimes, and usually only after the bank has already tried to keep you in the house. Since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s conservatorships began in September 2008, the two companies have completed 7,425,684 foreclosure prevention actions. Of those, 707,232, under 10 percent, were short sales or deeds in lieu.

How Many of Those Actions Actually Keep Someone in the House?

Most of them. 6,718,452 of the 7,425,684 total actions since 2008 kept the borrower in the home, including 2,871,396 permanent loan modifications. I walked through this quarter’s own version of that split on September 26: 404 short sales and deeds in lieu combined against 48,035 retention actions and 25,908 foreclosure starts, all completed between April and June. FHFA doesn’t break the 404 apart by type at the quarterly level. The historical total does, and across eighteen years it comes out to 707,232.

Is Forbearance Still Something the Bank Offers?

Less than it was. FHFA’s second quarter report, published September 24, shows 26,906 new forbearance plans started, down from 27,477 in the first quarter. At quarter end, 37,283 loans remained in forbearance, which is 0.12 percent of all loans serviced and 6.51 percent of loans that are actually delinquent. That’s a small and shrinking group next to the size of the two companies’ whole book.

Is Delinquency Actually Getting Worse?

Barely, and it depends which measure. Loans 60 or more days behind sat at 0.83 percent at quarter end, up from 0.81 percent in the first quarter. Serious delinquency, the deeper bucket, held flat at 0.59 percent. Neither number is a flow of new people falling behind. Both are a snapshot of where the book stood on June 30.

Why Does the Rate on a New Loan Matter If You’re Already Behind?

Because it closes the refinance door a little more each quarter. FHFA’s reported average 30 year rate for the quarter was 6.42 percent, up from 6.11 percent in the first quarter. A rate that high makes refinancing your way out of a problem loan a lot less useful than it was two years ago, which is part of why the workout options above carry more weight than they used to.

So Will the Bank Actually Say Yes to a Short Sale?

It depends on what’s already been tried. A short sale or deed in lieu is what happens after a modification, a forbearance plan or a repayment plan has already been worked through or turned down, not instead of one. That’s the order the numbers above lay out on their own: millions of retention actions against a few hundred thousand exits, spread across eighteen years. A homeowner who assumes a short sale is a form usually finds out it’s a negotiated approval that comes at the end of a process, not the start of one.

Also of note today, a University of North Florida poll released this week put a number on something else that pushes people toward that conversation in the first place.

My Insurance Company Dropped Me. Is That Normal in Florida?

Yes. The University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab surveyed 1,511 Florida homeowners with property insurance in July, released the results Monday, and found that 25 percent of them have been dropped by an insurer at least once in the past five years. You’re not the only one this happened to this year.

How Many Florida Homeowners Actually Switch Insurers?

Just over half. 54 percent changed their primary insurer at least once in five years, and 33 percent changed twice or more. Among the people who changed, 47 percent say they did it because they were dropped, not because they went looking for a better deal. Of that group, 25 points came from Citizens, 12 from a private insurer, and 10 because their insurer stopped writing policies in Florida altogether.

What Happens If You Actually File a Claim?

It doesn’t always get paid the first time. Of the 261 people in the poll who filed a claim, 45 percent said it was initially denied. That’s a much smaller group than the 1,511 total respondents, so treat it as a read on claims specifically, not on every policyholder in the state.

Is the Market Getting Better or Worse?

Most people don’t see it moving either way. 55 percent see no sign of improvement, 26 percent think it’s getting worse, and 18 percent think it’s improving. On who benefited from the state’s reform efforts, 69 percent said the insurance industry did, against 16 percent for consumers and 9 percent for trial lawyers.

None of that tells you what happens with your own policy at your next renewal. It tells you that if you do get a non renewal letter, you’re one of a lot of people this has already happened to.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what I work. Questions about your own file are always welcome.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR, Momentum Realty. SFR (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. Even if you accept this offer and use our service, your lender may not agree to change your loan.

I’m Three Months Behind on My Mortgage. Is It Too Late to Stop the Foreclosure?

No, not usually. Ninety days behind puts you in a bucket, not a courtroom, and the newest national numbers show more room between the two than there was seven years ago.

How Many People Are 90 Days Behind Right Now?

ICE released its First Look at August 2026 mortgage data on September 28. The count of loans 90 or more days past due rose by 11,000 to 574,000 nationally, ending five straight months of declines. That’s 19 percent above where it stood a year ago.

The 30 and 60 day buckets actually shrank on the year, down 21,000. One household moving from 30 days behind to 90 doesn’t mean more people fell behind this month. It can mean the same number fell behind earlier and are aging forward through the same buckets. ICE didn’t publish an entry rate, so nobody gets to assert one.

Does a Scary Headline Number Mean the Whole Picture Is Bad?

Read the 19 percent alone and it sounds like a crisis. Read it against history and it isn’t one yet: at 1.04 percent of active loans, the serious delinquency rate is in line with the 2017 to 2019 August average of 1.03 percent. Both numbers are true at once. ICE’s own release calls August’s 14 basis point monthly jump “effectively flat after accounting for the prior month’s calendar-driven decline,” and the year over year move is 10 basis points, not 14.

How Long Does It Actually Take to Go From Behind to Foreclosed?

Longer than most people think, and slower than it ran seven years ago. Foreclosure starts fell 6 percent in August, though they’re still 29 percent above a year ago. Completed foreclosure sales dipped 2 percent and are running at 57 percent of August 2019’s pace. Active foreclosure inventory sits at 0.54 percent of loans, matching its highest reading since February 2020, and ICE’s own headline calls the inventory growth a nine month low. The pipeline is still filling. It’s just filling slower than it was.

Put those together and the front of the process is moving at a little over half the speed it did in 2019, while more people sit in the queue behind it. Somebody three payments behind is in that queue. They aren’t standing in a courtroom yet, and the gap between the two is wider than it was.

Does It Matter What Kind of Loan I Have?

Yes, and most people can’t answer that question about their own mortgage. On an FHA loan, HUD’s own rule says the servicer can’t start foreclosure until at least three full monthly payments are due and unpaid, and only after working through the loss mitigation review and any appeal. Ninety days late on an FHA loan is a review trigger, not a starting gun. I read HUD’s Mortgagee Letter 2026-08 in full and walked through what that review actually does to a trial payment plan on September 12 and again on September 21.

Pull the mortgage statement and find out which kind of loan is on it before assuming anything about a calendar built for a different loan type.

What’s Worth Doing Before Assuming It’s Already Over?

Find the loan type first. Then find out what the servicer’s own review actually requires before it can move toward foreclosure, because that review is where the room is. That same room is what a short sale needs, since a lender’s approval on one of those usually takes longer than finding a buyer does.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is the bulk of what I work. Questions about your own file are always welcome.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

My House Needs Repairs I Can’t Afford. Can I Still Sell It?

Yes, you can still sell it. What usually decides whether that sale survives to closing isn’t your listing price. It’s the buyer’s loan.

What Can an FHA Appraiser Make You Fix Right Now?

Under the rules an FHA appraiser works from today, several things on a house get flagged as automatic repairs before the loan can close: defective exterior paint, the roof covering, the heating and cooling system, kitchen appliances, attic and crawl space conditions, and whether the utilities are on and running. None of that has to do with whether you and a buyer agreed on a price. It’s a separate checklist the appraiser runs, and it’s the appraisal, not the offer, that decides whether that buyer’s loan can close.

That’s where a lot of distressed sales actually die. Somebody two payments behind finds a buyer at a fair price. The appraiser writes up the roof. Now the only two people in the room have to work out who pays for a new roof: a buyer who just scraped together a down payment and closing costs, or a seller who’s behind on the mortgage. Usually neither one can. The buyer walks, and the house goes back on the market with weeks gone off a calendar the seller doesn’t control.

What Is FHA Proposing to Change?

On September 22, HUD posted a draft policy update on FHA’s own Drafting Table, “Modernizing and Strengthening Minimum Property Requirements.” It rewrites the section of the Single Family Housing Policy Handbook that sets this list. HUD’s own notice says the standards “have not been updated in over two decades and no longer reflect current industry practices.” Feedback on the draft closes November 6.

The draft would eliminate the automatic repair requirement for defective exterior paint and the roof covering, deferring instead to a general condition rating. Heating and cooling gets the same treatment. Utilities would no longer have to be turned on and operating before closing. Kitchen appliance standards go away entirely. Lead paint scope narrows to the dwelling itself instead of the whole property.

Does That Mean the House Doesn’t Have to Meet Any Standard?

No. What replaces the checklist is a single rating. The draft puts it plainly: houses get a condition rating from C1 to C6, and a minimum of C4 is required for FHA acceptability. A house rated C5 or C6 still doesn’t qualify. Dropping the roof and paint as automatic triggers moves the judgment onto that one number. It doesn’t loosen the standard for a wrecked house. It changes how a tired one gets evaluated.

An appraiser and a mortgagee still decide file by file. The draft’s own language is that where repairs are required, the mortgagee has to determine which ones actually get made.

Where Does That Leave You Right Now?

Nowhere different, yet. Nothing about this has taken effect. There’s no mortgagee letter and no effective date, and every FHA appraisal ordered this week runs under the rules in place today, not the draft. If you’re already under contract with a buyer using FHA financing, the roof, the paint and the HVAC system are still live items an appraiser can flag.

What Should You Find Out Before You Go Under Contract?

You could ask what loan type your buyer is using before the inspection period runs out, not after the appraisal comes back. FHA, VA, conventional and cash buyers all work under different property standards, and a repair that kills an FHA closing might not touch a conventional one. Might wanna find out what shape your roof and your HVAC system are in before you list, so a repair list doesn’t show up as a surprise the week you’re supposed to close.

Jacksonville is where I work these files, and questions about your own house are always welcome.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com or (904) 671-4161, call or text.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR®, Momentum Realty, SFR (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

My Buyer Backed Out. What Happens If I’m Behind on My Mortgage?

A contract falling apart doesn’t touch the clock on your loan. If you’re behind and selling, you’re running two clocks at once, and only one of them stops when a buyer signs.

Cotality’s monthly market read, published September 24, has the number behind it. Almost one in eight contracts from June still hadn’t closed sixty days later, the highest share in five years. Closed sales were down 5 percent year over year in August. Pending contracts slipped again in both July and August.

The same report has the number that explains why most sellers never feel any of this. Average borrower equity hit $310,000 in the second quarter, and only 2 percent of mortgage borrowers are underwater. A 15 percent price drop would only push that share up by 5 points. For most people, a dead deal just means relisting and waiting for the next buyer.

Why Are So Many Contracts Falling Through Right Now?

Cotality doesn’t say. The report counts the contracts that haven’t closed, not the reasons behind them, and it doesn’t separate a buyer’s financing falling through from a bad inspection or a change of heart. What it does show is the size of the gap: 1.3 percentage points wider than the same measure a year ago, alongside sales that are down and pending contracts that are down too.

Why Does This Hit Harder If You’re Behind on Payments?

Because a contract doesn’t pause a foreclosure case, and it doesn’t pause a servicer’s clock either. If you’re several payments behind with a case already on the court’s docket, losing a buyer sixty days in means restarting the file with whatever time is actually left, not with a fresh sixty days.

Does It Get Worse on a Short Sale?

Yes, and it’s the part most sellers don’t find out until it happens. A short sale approval is built around one specific buyer’s contract and price. Lose that buyer and the file usually goes back to the servicer’s desk, and the next offer gets underwritten against whatever the market looks like by then, not the number that was already approved.

What Should I Actually Be Checking First?

Not what the house is worth. A written payoff from the servicer and a clear look at where the foreclosure case actually stands, if there is one. Those two numbers tell you how many days are actually left. A home value estimate off a website doesn’t.

In other news, Florida’s insurance commissioner approved four homeowners rate cuts this week.

Is My Homeowners Insurance Actually Going Down in Florida?

Only if your carrier is one of the ones that filed.

Commissioner Mike Yaworsky approved decreases at One Alliance North America (10.4 percent, 17,148 policies), Safe Harbor Insurance (4.1 percent, 10,501 policies), Unique Insurance (3.2 percent, 8,266 policies) and Vyrd Insurance (10.4 percent, 26,751 policies). Add those four together and it’s roughly 62,700 policies, against a state with millions of homeowners policies in force.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation’s own numbers show where the wider trend sits. The 30-day average rate request is now 4.8 percent down, against 1.1 percent down the same time last year. Since January 2024, 48 companies have filed for decreases and 53 have asked for no change at all. Yaworsky’s own words: the office is getting rate decrease requests “ranging from -0.3% to -19.7%.”

Why Might My Payment Still Go Up Even if My Rate Goes Down?

Because a filed rate change is an average across a company’s whole book. A specific house can move differently depending on its county, its roof and its coverage. And insurance is only one line in an escrow payment. Property taxes sit in there too, along with whatever shortfall the last analysis found, so the total can still climb in the same year the insurance line drops. If your payment jumped and you’re behind because of it, the escrow analysis is what to read, not the press release.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is most of what crosses my desk. Happy to walk through where either of these actually lands for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call is easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR, Momentum Realty. SFR (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.

How Do I Get Rid of PMI Without Refinancing?

Ask. That’s the short answer, and it’s worked the whole time even though most servicers weren’t allowed to bring it up first. Private mortgage insurance, PMI, on a conventional loan can come off based on what your house is worth today, not just what you paid for it, and a rule that changed eight days ago makes it more likely your servicer raises that with you instead of waiting for you to ask.

What Changed on September 16?

Fannie Mae issued Lender Letter LL-2026-07 to every servicer that handles its loans. It permits them to reach out to borrowers who may be close to or already past the thresholds for mortgage insurance termination and tell them what it would take to get it removed. The letter’s own words say it’s effective immediately. Before that, a servicer reaching out first about this was against Fannie Mae’s rules. Now it’s allowed. Allowed, not required. Nothing in the letter says a servicer has to call.

Why Might My Servicer Not Know This Yet?

Fannie Mae’s own Servicing Guide, the rulebook servicers actually work from day to day, still carries the old sentence: the servicer must not solicit a borrower for mortgage insurance termination based on current value. That’s still sitting there this morning, and Fannie Mae says in the letter itself that the Guide won’t catch up until a future update. So a servicer that hasn’t read the new letter yet is still working off the old rule, which means asking is faster than waiting on a call that may not come for a while.

What Do I Actually Have to Clear?

Two different routes, and which one fits depends on when you bought.

The first goes off what the house was worth when you bought it. On a one-unit primary home or a second home, mortgage insurance comes off once the balance is scheduled to reach 80 percent of that original value. On an investment property, or a two to four unit primary home, it’s 70 percent.

The second goes off what the house is worth right now, and it’s the one that matters if prices near you have moved since you closed.

Two to five years: LTV has to be 75 percent or less.

More than five years: 80 percent or less.

Under two years, waived because your own improvements raised the value: 80 percent or less.

On an investment property, or a two to four unit primary home, it’s 70 percent or less, and you have to be past the two year mark.

Either way, the loan has to be current: no payment 30 or more days late in the last 12 months, none 60 or more days late in the last 24. If a payment ran late because of an actual disaster and your servicer put you on a forbearance or a repayment plan that you kept up with, that late payment doesn’t count against you.

How Does the Valuation Work?

You can’t just get your own appraisal and hand it over. If you qualify on the current-value route, your servicer orders an inspection of the inside and outside of the house through Fannie Mae’s own system. It typically takes 14 days or less, the number is good for 120 days, and there’s a way to appeal it if you think it’s wrong.

What if the Servicer Says No?

They have to tell you why, including the value they used, within 30 days.

One thing this doesn’t touch. This is Fannie Mae’s rule for conventional loans it owns or backs. FHA works under a different set of rules, and on most FHA loans today, mortgage insurance doesn’t come off at all no matter what the house is worth.

Also of note today, a different story explains why some new construction buyers end up underwater faster than everybody else.

Why Are New Construction Buyers Ending Up Underwater Faster Than Everyone Else?

Because a lot of them close with almost nothing down, and the builder two streets over can cut them into the ground.

ResiClub, citing data from the AEI Housing Center, laid out how wide that gap runs between builders in 2025. Three percent of Toll Brothers buyers financed with an FHA loan. At LGI Homes it was 53 percent. Toll Brothers’ average sale price is $996,400. LGI’s is $367,407. Ashton Woods went from 15 percent FHA in 2022 to 39 percent now.

Why Do Builders Push FHA So Hard?

FHA takes as little as 3.5 percent down, works with lower credit scores and higher debt ratios, and lets the seller, which on a new build is the builder, contribute up to 6 percent toward the buyer’s closing costs against 3 percent on a conventional loan with less than 10 percent down. HUD also cut FHA’s annual mortgage insurance premium in 2023, from 0.85 percent to 0.55 percent. Stack a builder’s own in-house lender and a bought-down rate on top of that, and a buyer who couldn’t qualify conventionally closes anyway.

I Bought a Brand New House. Why Is It Already Worth Less Than I Paid?

I laid out on September 20 how to check whether your house’s value has actually fallen and how many Florida markets have gone through a real correction. What’s specific to new construction is the arithmetic underneath it. Put 3.5 percent down, closing costs eat most of what’s left, and the builder down the street keeps cutting the price on the same floor plan, which resets the comps for the whole community. A year or two in, the house appraises under the payoff, and nothing was done wrong to get there.

ResiClub names Texas, Florida and the Mountain West as core homebuilding markets that have already gone through real price corrections. That’s not a claim about any one house. It’s the pattern the data points to in exactly the kind of new communities where loans like this are common.

Does This Mean I Should Sell?

Not something I can answer from a blog post, but I can tell you what a short sale actually has to clear if it ever comes to that: a payoff covered by the sale price, minus commission, doc stamps, title and whatever the buyer negotiates toward their own costs. On a resale bought with real equity, there’s room for all of that. On a 3.5 percent down new build in a community that’s repriced, there often isn’t, which is why that conversation reaches these owners a lot sooner than it reaches a neighbor who bought with 20 percent down back in 2019.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and mortgage math like this is most of what crosses my desk. Happy to walk through where your own numbers actually land.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if a call’s easier.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR® · Momentum Realty · SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.