Can I Catch Up on My Mortgage After I’ve Missed Payments?

Yes. In July, 464,000 mortgages that were behind on payments went back to current, the most in a single month since March. Catching up isn’t rare. More loans caught up in July than fell newly delinquent.

How Many People Actually Get Current Again?

ICE published its July mortgage performance data Monday. A cure is a loan that was past due and isn’t anymore, whether that happened because somebody made up the payments, got a modification, or worked out a repayment plan with the servicer. 464,000 loans did that across every stage of delinquency, up 12 percent from June.

Inside that number, 64,100 loans cured out of serious delinquency, meaning 90 days or more past due. That’s up 7 percent and the strongest month for that group since October 2025.

Is It Too Late If I’m Already 90 Days Behind?

Not based on what servicers did in July. New defaults moved the other way: 102,000 borrowers crossed the 90-day line last month, down 4 percent from a year ago. FHA loans led that decline, 13 percent fewer new defaults than last year. ICE’s Andy Walden said new default activity has eased from last year’s pace in four of the past five months.

Being deep behind and being out of options aren’t the same thing. Cures at 90-plus days are running at their best rate in nine months, which means servicers are approving workouts, not just collecting.

What’s Happening to the People Who Don’t Catch Up?

The same release has the other half. Foreclosure starts hit 38,600 in July, up 23 percent from a year ago. Active foreclosure inventory reached 296,000 properties, up 43 percent annually. Completed foreclosure sales came in at 7,900, up 14 percent, though ICE notes that’s still only 59 percent of pre-pandemic volume.

The 464,000 who cured and the households behind those foreclosure starts aren’t two different populations. They’re the same kind of household at different points on the same slide. Nothing in the data says which way any one house goes.

Does Florida Show Up in This Report?

No. ICE names its five worst states for non-current loans this month: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana and Arkansas. Florida isn’t on that list or the good one, and no Florida figure appears anywhere in this release.

That’s consistent with what I wrote here on August 27. Florida’s problem isn’t the rate people fall behind, it’s the rate cases move once they’re filed, because every foreclosure here has to go through a judge. That court process is the window a cure, a modification, or a short sale has to work inside. The cure numbers above are the argument for calling the servicer early rather than waiting for a letter that sounds official. What they can’t tell you is how long your specific file has, because that depends on your loan type, your servicer, and here in Florida, the court’s own docket.

In other news, a second report out this month explains something a lot of Florida homeowners are staring at on a renewal notice right now.

Why Did My Home Insurance Go Up Again When the News Says Rates Are Coming Down?

Because the number in the news isn’t the number on your bill. Matic’s mid-year insurance report, released August 6, put the national increase for newly written home insurance policies at 5.9 percent in the first half of 2026, down from 8.1 percent last year and 18.7 percent the year before. That’s a real slowdown, and it’s the number that made headlines.

What’s the Difference Between That Number and My Renewal Bill?

Homeowners actually renewing a policy saw an average increase of 10.6 percent over the same period. Down from 19.4 percent in 2025 and 28 percent in 2024, so the direction matches, but the level is nearly double the 5.9 percent figure everyone quoted. A new-policy rate is what a shopper gets quoted moving to a different carrier. A renewal rate is what you pay to stay put. Comparing your renewal to the headline number is comparing yourself to somebody who switched.

If your escrow account is what’s actually moving your payment, I walked through how that works on August 17: the servicer pays the bigger premium, your account runs short, and the shortage gets spread across the payments in front of you along with the higher amount going forward.

Is There Any Real Good News in This Report?

One count stands out more than the averages. 11.7 percent of renewing homeowners saw their premium go down this year, the highest share Matic has recorded, up from 7.4 percent in 2025 and 4.9 percent in 2024. The average number of quotes available per person also rose, 27 percent from last year and 74 percent from the 2024 low. Carriers are competing for business again in a way they weren’t two years ago.

Does Florida Follow the National Trend?

Matic names Florida as an exception, grouped with California and New Jersey as states still running double-digit premium increases. The report doesn’t publish a Florida percentage, so there isn’t one to quote here. What’s clear from Matic’s own wording is that the national moderation in the headline doesn’t describe a Florida renewal.

The useful move in this report isn’t the average, it’s the quote count. Seventy-four percent more quotes available than at the 2024 low means the market is worth re-shopping, and 11.7 percent of renewals came back lower this year. Nobody can tell you from a national report whether your specific roof, county and carrier put you in that group. That’s a conversation with an insurance agent, not a statistic.

Missed mortgage payments and a bigger insurance bill land on a house through different doors, but they both end up asking the same question: what do you do if the numbers stop working. Catch up if the money gets there. Ask the servicer about a modification or a repayment plan. Sell the ordinary way if the equity is there. Ask the lender to take less through a short sale if it isn’t. Hand it back through a deed in lieu. Or let the court process run and deal with what’s on the other side. Each one costs something different, and which one fits is yours to decide, not mine.

I’m in Jacksonville, and distressed property is most of what I work on. My license stops at the state line, so a question like this from anywhere else goes out through the SFR referral network to somebody licensed where you live.

If any of this is close to your situation, I’m not hard to reach. 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.