I’m Behind on My Mortgage. Who Do I Call First?

Call your servicer, or call a free HUD-approved housing counselor. Different guides give different first steps, and neither one is wrong. A new report says more people are skipping both and calling a lawyer instead, and that’s the category that just posted its biggest jump of the year.

What’s Behind the Jump in People Calling a Lawyer?

LegalShield tracks something nobody else does: not foreclosure filings, not a delinquency rate, but what share of the calls into its network of attorneys are about foreclosure. In September that number, its Foreclosure Index, came in at 52.6, up 14.8 percent from a year earlier. That’s the biggest annual gain of the three areas of law the index tracks against each other, and it’s climbed year over year for thirteen straight months now. LegalShield’s own description of the number: each subindex reflects “the number of intakes in an area of law as a share of total intakes in a given month,” measured against a baseline set in January 2002. The company runs roughly 150,000 of these calls a month across about 90 legal categories, so this isn’t a thin sample.

Matt Layton, LegalShield’s senior vice president of Consumer Analytics: “Confidence surveys tell you how people feel. Our data show what people are doing about it.”

One of the attorneys actually taking those calls, Ben Farrow of Anderson, Williams, & Farrow: “The homeowners calling us budgeted and did the right things, but inflation is eating into their income.”

Does That Match What’s Actually Happening With Delinquencies?

Mostly, yes, from a different angle. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s own count, for the second quarter of 2026, put overall delinquency on one-to-four-unit mortgages at 4.37 percent, seasonally adjusted, down slightly from the first quarter but up 44 basis points from a year earlier. Loans actually in foreclosure ticked up to 0.67 percent. The share considered seriously delinquent, meaning 90 days or more past due or in foreclosure, rose for a fourth straight quarter, and FHA loans alone saw serious delinquency climb more than 225 basis points over the year.

MBA’s Marina Walsh put it plainly in that same release: “Some loans are continuing to move to later stages of delinquency.” That’s a household that was thirty days behind in the spring sliding further behind now, not a new group showing up out of nowhere. She tied part of it to a softer job market and to people falling behind on student loans, credit cards and car payments too, which can show up before the mortgage itself does.

So Who Do You Actually Call First?

The two free answers you’ll run into aren’t actually in conflict. Federal consumer guidance, the kind the FTC publishes, says call your servicer first, the company on your monthly statement, since they’re the only one who can actually change your loan terms. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s own mortgage help page leads with a different free option: a HUD-approved housing counselor, found through its own search tool or by calling HUD directly at (800) 569-4287 with your zip code ready. A counselor can’t change your loan, but they can help you organize what to say to your servicer and walk through your options for free, before or after that call. Either route, the warning is the same: anyone who wants money upfront or promises to stop a foreclosure outright isn’t legitimate.

The federal money behind HUD’s housing counseling program is tangled up in litigation right now. New York’s Attorney General challenged a HUD move to pull back roughly $56.1 million in counseling funds, and reports in early October said a federal judge stepped in to preserve that money, at least for now. The free route is open today. Whether the funding behind it holds up past this year is a separate question, and one worth watching rather than assuming either way.

Why Does Any of This Matter If You’re Behind?

A share of legal calls climbing for thirteen straight months, next to a delinquency rate sliding into its later, more serious stages, points at the same thing from two directions: people are far enough behind to be looking for someone to call, usually well before any foreclosure filing shows up. That’s often six to nine months ahead of a filing, which is the window where a short sale can still get worked through in an orderly way instead of under a deadline. Making that first call to a free option instead of a paid one doesn’t cost anything to find out if it helps.

Also of note today, a Fort Lauderdale condo building just turned a $1.6 million repair into a $36 million one, and the mechanics behind it come straight from Florida law.

What Happens If I Can’t Pay My Condo Special Assessment?

If your declaration doesn’t set its own interest rate, Florida law sets one for you automatically: 18 percent a year, on top of whatever else is owed.

What Actually Happened at This One Building?

CBS News Miami reported this month on the Galleon, on Fort Lauderdale’s Galt Ocean Mile. A concrete restoration project first priced at $1.6 million has grown into a $36 million job, running five years now, with owners assessed anywhere from $135,000 to $320,000 a unit. The pool and patio are down to bare concrete.

Sergio Cella, a pilot and engineer who’s lived there thirty years, says cracking on his own balcony has gone unfixed through three separate repair attempts: “The quality is not there.” Edward Rumin, a lawyer and former board member, called the process “snowballed” and said owners were “lied to,” adding, “I don’t think we’ll ever get any of the money back.” The contractor’s side, through an executive at Hartzel, says the board itself expanded the original contract through a series of owner-approved change orders. The board president dismissed the complaints, told the reporter owners “can’t afford to live on the ocean,” and had already sold his own unit and resigned days before the story ran.

Nobody outside that building knows how this resolves. What Florida law does to a bill like this while it sits unpaid is the part everyone else can actually use.

What Does the Law Actually Do to an Unpaid Assessment?

Florida Statute 718.116 spells it out, and the payment order works backward from what you’d expect. An unpaid assessment starts accruing interest from its due date, at whatever rate the declaration sets, or 18 percent a year if it doesn’t set one. The association can also add a late fee, up to the greater of $25 or 5 percent of what’s overdue. Any payment sent in gets applied first to interest, then to the late fee, then to the association’s own attorney fees, and only what’s left after that touches the assessment itself. Writing “for the assessment only” on the check doesn’t change that order. The statute says so directly.

The association can’t get a foreclosure judgment until at least 45 days after it gives written notice of its intent to foreclose the lien. And whoever owns the unit owes every assessment that comes due while they own it, no matter how they came to own it, including someone who bought it at a foreclosure sale.

Why Does This Matter If You Owe More Than the Unit Is Worth?

A special assessment like this comes with its own lien, already accruing at 18 percent before anyone even sends a late notice, and the attorney fees that follow only make the number bigger while someone’s trying to catch up. It also sits in a different spot than a mortgage: the association’s lien is junior to a first mortgage recorded before it, so the two debts aren’t interchangeable and don’t get settled the same way. If a unit’s underwater on both a mortgage and a six-figure assessment, a short sale on it has to work out the lender and the association side by side, and the estoppel figure from the association is usually where that deal either comes together or falls apart.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what crosses my desk these days. Reach out if either one of these is close to 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.