Two Dates in August and One Number That’s Older Than It Looks
Three things landed on the Florida distressed-housing beat this week. Two of them are dates on a calendar, both inside the next seven days. The third is a number that got heavy national coverage and is actually from the first quarter.
They look unrelated. They aren’t. Every one of them is about timing, and timing is usually the part that costs people the most.
The Condo Loan Door Narrows on August 3
On August 3, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac retire something called limited review.
Limited review was the short version of the check a lender runs on a condo association before approving a conventional loan. After August 3, nearly every condo project with more than 10 units goes through full review instead. Reserves, insurance, association finances, all of it examined. The required reserve funding also moves from 10% to 15%, with another step planned for early 2027. This comes out of Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 and Freddie Mac’s matching bulletin, both dated March 18, 2026.
Here’s the Florida piece. AD Mortgage gave its own origination numbers to Mortgage Professional America on July 24. Of 1,434 conventional Florida condo loans they’ve originated since 2021, 757 used limited review. That’s 52.8%. In 2025 alone it was 394 loans through limited review against 245 through full review. The path that’s going away is the one more than half of their Florida condo buyers were using.
On reserves, two figures worth keeping separate. AD Mortgage looked at 82 condo projects by manual lender certification in the twelve months ending June 19, and 25 of them, 30.5%, had reserve funding below the new 15% threshold. That’s a count from their own file. Separately, NAMB president Kimber White estimates roughly 80% of Florida condos don’t meet even the current 10% threshold. That one is an estimate, not a count, and it’s worth reading as one.
What this does to a condo owner is simple enough. If a building can’t clear full review, the buyers who need a conventional loan can’t buy in it. What’s left is cash buyers and non-QM lending, which costs the borrower more. A smaller buyer pool usually means a lower price. And if you’re already behind and the sale needs your lender’s approval, a lower price means a bigger gap for them to sign off on.
There’s a second edge to it. A reserve shortfall doesn’t stay on paper. It usually comes back as a special assessment, four figures and sometimes five, landing on owners who are already stretched.
If you own a condo and you don’t know where your association’s reserves actually sit, that’s a question you’re entitled to ask them, and the answer is yours to have.
Florida’s Late-Payment Number Went National This Week
Two national pieces put Florida’s late-payment picture in front of a wide audience on July 27 and 28.
The first was produced by Offerpad and distributed by Stacker, and it ran in dozens of local outlets: 7.05% of home loans in Florida had late payments reported to credit agencies in the first quarter of 2026, 3.87% higher than the fourth quarter of 2025.
Now, the caveat, because it matters. That’s first-quarter data. The Mortgage Bankers Association released it back in May. What’s new this week is the coverage, not the number. Second-quarter figures aren’t out yet. If you read a headline this week and thought something just happened, it didn’t.
The second piece has more weight. ABC News ran its own analysis of ATTOM data. Foreclosure filings nationwide were up 21% in the first six months of 2026 against the same period last year, and up 28% against 2024. Florida posted the highest average number of yearly foreclosure filings per ZIP code of any state since 2020, ahead of New Jersey, Delaware, Nevada and South Carolina.
Per ZIP code is a different measurement than per housing unit, and it lands harder. It says these filings are concentrated in neighborhoods rather than spread evenly across the state. If you’re behind on payments in Jacksonville or in Clay County, you’re probably not the only house on your street in that position.
That’s worth sitting with, because a lot of people going through this are convinced they’re the only one. That belief is usually what keeps somebody from picking up the phone until the clock has already run out. Falling behind on a mortgage isn’t a character flaw. Most of the time it’s life landing hard on somebody who was fine a year ago.
Three Historic Buildings, One Auction Site, August 5
The Laura Street Trio in downtown Jacksonville is set for a court-ordered foreclosure auction at 11 a.m. on August 5, at duval.realforeclose.com.
The Trio is three buildings at northeast Laura and Forsyth: the Florida Life Insurance building, the Bisbee, and the Marble Bank. They were among the first structures built after the 1901 fire and have sat vacant for decades. The city of Jacksonville filed the foreclosure suit in November 2024 against Laura Trio LLC and Red Oak Capital Fund II LLC, alleging $827,500 owed in municipal code violation fines. Indiana-based Becovic Management Group took over the mortgage in February 2026, and its owner has said he still intends to acquire and redevelop the buildings.
Foreclosure gets talked about like it only happens to people who made bad decisions with their money. Here’s a set of historic downtown buildings, backed by a capital fund, going through the same door, on the same website where a house on the Westside ends up. The process doesn’t sort by who you are. It sorts by whether the payments stopped and how long the clock has been running.
Florida is a judicial foreclosure state, so a court has to sign off before any of this happens. That takes time. And that time is the part most people don’t hear about early enough to use it.
Where This Leaves You
Two of these have a date on them. The third has a lag on it. All three point the same direction, which is that the useful window on a distressed property almost always opens earlier than people realize and closes quieter than they expect.
If you’re in it, you have options, and they cost different things. A short sale, a deed in lieu, a straight sale if there’s equity left, letting it run its course. Each one has a different effect on your credit, your taxes, and what you owe afterward. Florida is also a recourse state, so what happens to any leftover balance comes down to the paperwork. I’m not an attorney and I’m not your CPA. Those two questions belong with people who are.
What I can do is walk you through how the process actually works and what each option looks like from the inside, and then move with whatever you decide.
I’m based in Jacksonville and licensed in Florida. Questions come in from other states too, and those go out through the SFR referral network, because I don’t represent anybody outside Florida.
If you’ve got a question, email JimArmstrong904@gmail.com or call or text (904) 671-4161. No obligation and no pitch on the other end of it.
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.
Sources: Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 and Freddie Mac Bulletin, March 18, 2026; Mortgage Professional America, July 24, 2026; Mortgage Bankers Association Q1 2026 National Delinquency Survey; ATTOM Data Solutions midyear 2026 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, via ABC News; Stacker and Offerpad; Jacksonville Daily Record and News4JAX.
