How Do I Find Out if I Owe More on My House Than It’s Worth?

Two phone calls tell you. Request a written payoff statement from your servicer, good through a specific date. Then get a real opinion of value on the house as it sits today. Subtract the cost of sale from the value, set it against the payoff. That’s the answer, and it beats guessing every time.

Why Isn’t My Servicer’s App Balance the Real Number?

Because the balance in the app isn’t the payoff. The payoff carries interest to the date of funding, plus any advanced escrow, corporate advances and fees your servicer has added along the way. Ask for the payoff statement by name. It’s the only number that’s actually binding.

I laid out that same two-number test on September 20: a payoff figure from your servicer and a real opinion of value, set against each other, rather than a website estimate. What’s new this morning is a national data point that puts a size on how many Florida sellers are actually sitting in that spot right now.

How Many Florida Homes for Sale Right Now Are Actually Underwater?

7.0 percent, according to Parcl Labs’ live tracker, updated this morning. That’s Florida’s share of active listings where the estimated home value sits below the estimated loan balance. Nationally it’s 3.6 percent, so Florida’s rate runs roughly double.

Is That the Same as a Seller Asking Less Than They Paid?

No, and mixing the two up is exactly what’s happening on social media right now. Parcl tracks a second, separate number called Unrealized Loss: the share of listings asking below what the owner originally paid for the house. Nationally that’s 7.0 percent, 114,388 of 1,629,173 active listings. In Florida it’s 11.1 percent.

Asking less than you paid is about the purchase price. Owing more than the house is worth is about the loan balance. Someone who put twenty percent down in 2022 and is asking five percent under what they paid is taking a paper loss and isn’t underwater on the mortgage at all. Someone who put three and a half percent down on an FHA loan can be asking more than they paid and still not clear the payoff once the cost of sale comes off the top.

How Solid Is This Data?

Read it with the same caution as any modeled estimate. Parcl states plainly that its Underwater Listings figure runs on the Parcl Estimate, which is in beta, and that the loan balance side assumes the FRED thirty year rate at the time of origination rather than a borrower’s actual note rate. It also counts listings, not households, so it says nothing about the much larger group of Florida owners who aren’t trying to sell right now.

None of that makes 7.0 percent meaningless. Same publisher, same metric, same day, for both the national and Florida figures, which makes the comparison a fair one even with the caveats attached. One in fourteen Florida homes on the market today probably can’t pay off the loan out of the sale.

Also of note today, a different housing story broke around what sellers are giving up at the closing table.

Do I Have to Pay the Buyer’s Closing Costs to Sell My House?

Increasingly, yes, somewhere. Redfin’s August numbers, published September 18, show sellers gave a concession in 44.7 percent of U.S. home sales, the highest August share since Redfin’s records began in 2020.

What Is a Seller Concession, Exactly?

Money that comes off your side of the settlement statement after the price is already agreed. It’s not a discount on the list price. It’s cash handed back at closing, usually toward the buyer’s closing costs or a rate buydown.

How Common Are Concessions in Florida Right Now?

Tampa: 47.8 percent of sales carried a concession, down 1.6 points from a year ago.

Miami: 43.8 percent, up 4.0 points.

Orlando: 43.5 percent, up 8.2 points.

Jacksonville isn’t in Redfin’s table. They publish 29 metros with enough agent-reported data behind them, and Northeast Florida isn’t one of the 29, so there’s no local number here, only the regional direction.

Why Does a Concession Matter More the Less Equity You Have?

Because it comes out of the same pool of proceeds as the commission and the ordinary closing costs. For a seller with real equity, it’s a rounding error. For a seller with four percent equity, it can be the difference between closing and not closing. And it stacks: almost one in six U.S. sales in August carried both a price cut and a concession on top of it.

Does a Short Sale Work the Same Way?

No, and the difference is worth knowing before anyone signs anything. In a short sale, you have no proceeds to give, so a concession comes out of the lender’s money, not yours, which means the lender decides. Servicers often cap what they’ll allow toward a buyer’s costs, and some won’t permit one at all. If a short sale offer includes a concession, what the servicer will actually approve is worth confirming before the offer goes in.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I do this work, and distressed property is most of what crosses my desk. If either of these hits close to home, I’m glad to walk through where you actually stand.

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.

Is Flood Insurance Going to Shut Down on September 30?

No, and the date that actually matters moved over two weeks ago. Congress extended the National Flood Insurance Program to December 11, 2026, which puts the real deadline inside closing season instead of eight days before it.

Why Does FEMA’s Own Website Still Say September 30?

Because FEMA hasn’t caught up. Their Congressional Reauthorization page, read early this morning, still describes a law from February and says “Congress must now reauthorize the NFIP by no later than 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2026.” Search the question yourself today and nearly every result on the first page, including FEMA’s own, still points at September 30. That’s the page a worried homeowner finds first.

The National Association of Home Builders posted the real update on September 4: the short term continuing resolution Congress passed at the start of the month pushed the program’s authority to December 11. The National Association of REALTORS already retitled its own FAQ to match. The old title now redirects straight to the new one.

What Happens to My Closing If the Program Actually Lapses?

Nothing catastrophic, and the mechanics are worth knowing even with the date pushed back. If the NFIP does lapse, it can’t issue new or renewal policies while it’s out. Policies already in force stay in force through their own expiration date, including a 30 day grace period, and claims keep getting paid while FEMA has the funds.

Can a Buyer Just Take Over the Seller’s Flood Policy During a Lapse?

Yes. An insurer can assign the seller’s existing NFIP policy to the buyer just by substituting names on it. Coverage on the property carries straight over, and nobody has to write a brand new policy. That’s the piece that actually saves a closing if the timing ever gets tight again. A property that doesn’t already carry an NFIP policy, or a buyer who needs a new one from scratch, is where the real exposure sits.

Private flood insurance isn’t touched by any of this. And most federal lending regulators suspend the flood insurance purchase requirement during a lapse, which leaves it up to each individual lender whether they’ll still fund a loan in a special flood hazard area.

How Many Closings Would a Lapse Actually Touch?

FEMA’s own page still carries an estimate from NAR: roughly 1,300 property sales a day, about 40,000 closings a month, nationally, if the program goes dark. That’s the number driving the anxiety, and it’s now attached to a date eighty days further out than the one making the rounds.

What Do I Actually Watch Now?

December 11. That’s the date that sits inside closing season, and it’s worth putting on a calendar in place of September 30. Anybody with an October closing in a flood zone was bracing for a deadline that already moved over two weeks before today.

Also of note today, a very different housing story broke two hundred miles south in Miami.

Are Houses Still Selling in Miami?

Yes, if you’re selling to a cash buyer. MIAMI REALTORS published its August numbers on September 17, and closed sales across the five county South Florida region fell 2.8 percent from a year ago. That’s the first year over year decline after eleven straight months of increases, though year to date sales are still up 7.5 percent. The association’s Chief Economist, Gay Cororaton, points at mortgage rates, which she has at 6.7 percent for the month.

Is It Harder to Sell a Condo Than a House Right Now?

By the numbers, yes. Condo and townhome sales fell 5.7 percent year over year in August, with Broward down 9.3 percent, Palm Beach down 6.7 percent, Martin down 22.8 percent and St. Lucie down 9.5 percent. Miami-Dade condos were the one county that didn’t fall, up 0.9 percent. Cororaton names the reason in her own words: “added costs from higher condominium fees and special assessments to fund building maintenance and structural repairs.”

Why Are Million Dollar Sales Going Up at the Same Time?

Because that buyer isn’t taking out a mortgage. Sales at a million dollars and up rose 12.8 percent in August and are up 21.7 percent year to date, and 60 percent of those sales are all cash against 42 percent for sales generally. Closings at ten million and up are already at 371 for the year, on pace to land second only to 2021, and 86 percent of those were cash too.

A rate at 6.7 percent does nothing to a buyer who isn’t financing. It does plenty to the buyer who would have taken a condo off somebody’s hands, once they run the mortgage plus the association fee plus the assessment and walk away instead. If you’re selling a condo in that price range right now, you’re competing for a smaller pool of financed buyers than a year ago, and a lender’s approval clock on a short sale doesn’t slow down to match it.

Jacksonville, Florida is my market, and distressed property is most of what I work. Happy to help you figure out where any of this actually lands for you.

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

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 My Trial Payment Amount Change Before My Loan Modification Is Final?

Yes, and it’s not a mistake on your servicer’s end. It comes from an update to FHA’s loss mitigation rules that reaches its deadline today, September 21, though the honest framing is that today is the last day a servicer could still have been running the old version. Some have been on the new rules since June.

What Changed in This Rule, and Where I Already Covered It

HUD’s Mortgagee Letter 2026-08, signed June 23, rewrote several pieces of how FHA trial payment plans and loan modification reviews work. I read the letter in full and walked through the trial plan lengths, the new three-strikes rule on refusing a trial plan, and the 90-day servicer extension on September 12. That piece still holds. What follows here is what it left out.

Why Would My Trial Payment Not Match My Permanent Modification Payment?

HUD now requires servicers to run an escrow analysis before setting the trial payment amount, and it says outright that the number can move between the trial plan and the permanent modification because property taxes or insurance went up. In Florida, that’s not a small print item. A premium jump landing mid-trial is common enough that HUD wrote the change into the letter specifically, in its own words, “to reduce uncertainty for Mortgagees.”

If your third trial payment comes in at a different number than your first, that doesn’t automatically mean something’s wrong. Worth asking your servicer for the escrow analysis behind the change before assuming the file is off.

Can I Send a Trial Payment in Early?

Yes, as of this update. The letter now lets a borrower pay a trial installment before the month it’s due, which lines up with a separate housing policy waiver HUD issued March 3, 2026. It doesn’t shorten the plan. It gives you room to pay ahead if the money is there.

What Still Ends a Trial Payment Plan?

A payment that doesn’t arrive by the last day of the calendar month it’s due. The property being condemned or abandoned. Telling your servicer up front the plan won’t be met. Or refusing to accept a trial plan agreement a third time within the same default episode, which is the newest of the four and a different trigger than missing a payment. I laid out both triggers in more detail on September 12.

What Happens After a Trial Plan Fails?

The servicer reports the failure to HUD. If there’s no other way to keep the home, HUD requires the servicer to evaluate what it calls Home Disposition Options, its term for the paths that don’t end in keeping the house. A short sale sits inside that category. HUD also gives the servicer an automatic 90 days to act on that or restart foreclosure. That window belongs to the servicer’s own clock, not to you.

What’s Worth Asking Your Servicer This Week

Whether your file is running under the new rules yet, and what moved in your escrow if your trial payment changed. Either answer changes what you’re actually looking at.

Jacksonville, Florida is my home market, and distressed property is most of what I work. Happy to help figure out where any of this sits for you.

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

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.

Is My House Worth Less Than I Paid for It?

Maybe, and it depends more on when and where you bought than on anything in this week’s national headlines. Home values nationally are up 1.3 percent over the past year. In Florida, that number splits hard by metro, and sixteen of the fifty four housing markets in the country where values fell are here.

How Many Housing Markets Actually Fell in Value This Year?

Fifty four, out of the three hundred largest metro markets in the country. ResiClub published the count on September 18, using Zillow’s own home value index through the end of August. That’s the fewest declining markets in three years. A year earlier the same measure showed 109 of 300 markets falling, better than one in three. This year it’s about one in five.

So the national trend is toward improvement, not away from it. Florida didn’t move with it.

How Many of Those Are in Florida?

Sixteen. Close to a third of the national list, out of one state.

Cape Coral-Fort Myers: down 3.09 percent

Punta Gorda: down 2.84 percent

Lakeland-Winter Haven: down 2.15 percent

Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford: down 1.35 percent

Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater: down 0.64 percent

Jacksonville: down 0.03 percent

Cape Coral and Punta Gorda sit at the top of Florida’s list. For scale, the single worst reading in the country is London, Kentucky, down 5.21 percent, with Austin, Texas close behind at down 4.16 percent.

Is Jacksonville’s Home Value Actually Falling?

No. Down 0.03 percent over twelve months is flat, not falling. Jacksonville is the last name on the list of 54, which is another way of saying it barely qualifies.

Nobody in Duval County woke up to a crash this year. But flat is a different animal than the six percent a year that would have paid off a 2022 purchase in three years, and it’s a different animal from a market where a builder or a neighbor’s price cut is actively working against you.

Does a Falling Home Value Index Mean I Owe More Than My House Is Worth?

Not by itself. The Zillow Home Value Index is a modeled estimate, not a record of what actually sold. I walked through that same estimate-versus-sale-price gap back on July 30, and it still holds here: an index can move without a single house in your neighborhood changing hands, and it says nothing about your specific address.

What decides whether you owe more than your house is worth is your loan balance and the cost of selling, set against what a buyer would actually pay today. Somebody who bought in Cape Coral in 2022 with a small down payment and somebody who bought in Jacksonville the same year are on the same slide at different points on it. The index is the part you can see on a website. The payoff figure is the part that decides whether you can sell, and it isn’t in this report or any other headline.

Is the Overall Housing Market Getting Better or Worse?

Both, depending on where you’re standing. Nationally, it’s improving. A year ago the national reading was down 0.01 percent. Now it’s up 1.3 percent, and the count of falling markets dropped from 109 to 54.

Florida stayed heavy on the list anyway. Among just the fifty largest markets in the country, 21 of them, 42 percent, are still negative. ResiClub names Texas, Florida and Colorado together as the states carrying active inventory well above pre-pandemic 2019 levels, and describes what’s happening in them as material corrections in some spots and flat pricing in others.

None of that is about mortgage rates, which moved on their own path this month. Freddie Mac’s survey put the 30 year fixed at 6.95 percent on September 17, a fourth straight weekly increase.

What Do I Actually Do If I Think I’m Underwater?

Get the real numbers before you act on a headline. That means a current payoff figure from your servicer, in writing, and an honest look at what comparable homes near you have actually sold for, not listed for. Those two numbers, not a metro index, tell you where you stand.

If the payoff comes in higher than what the house would sell for after commission and closing costs, a short sale is one of the paths available, and it runs on the lender’s approval rather than yours alone. It’s one option among several, and which one fits depends on the loan, the lender and your own file.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I work, and distressed property is most of what crosses my desk. Happy to talk through where your situation actually sits in any of this.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 Did My Home Equity Line Payment Just Go Up?

Banks moved their prime rate to 7.00 percent on September 17, up from 6.75 percent, and most home equity lines are priced directly off it. If your statement changed this month and you didn’t draw another dollar against the line, that’s almost certainly why.

What Actually Changed on September 17?

Wells Fargo’s own newsroom said it plainly the day before it took effect: the bank was raising its prime rate to 7.00 percent from 6.75 percent, effective September 17. The Federal Reserve’s H.15 report, released September 18, backs it up. Bank prime sat at 6.75 percent every day from September 11 through the 16th, then moved to 7.00 percent on the 17th.

Banks set prime. The Fed doesn’t raise it. It just reports what banks are already posting. This move landed the same week the Fed voted on its own overnight rate, which is a separate number that sits behind a different part of your finances and shouldn’t be read as the same thing.

Why Does That Move a Home Equity Line?

I walked through the mechanics of this three days ago, so I won’t repeat all of it here. A home equity line is usually a variable rate loan, priced as an index plus a margin written into your loan documents, and prime is the most common index. When the index moves, the payment can move with it, without you drawing another dollar or missing anything.

What your specific line does next isn’t something I can tell you from here. The index, the margin, and the date your rate actually adjusts are sitting in your own paperwork, and a quarter point on prime doesn’t automatically mean a quarter point shows up on your next statement. The same paperwork usually also lets the lender freeze or reduce the line if your home’s value drops or your finances get worse, which is a separate risk from a rate change and worth knowing is in there.

Does This Change Anything if I’m Trying to Sell?

A home equity line getting more expensive doesn’t change what happens to it at closing. It still has to be paid off in full, same as the first mortgage. I walked through that math on September 9, including why the lender holding the second loan doesn’t have to agree to take less than it’s owed just because the first lender did.

What changes is the pressure underneath it. Americans were carrying $459 billion on home equity lines at the end of the second quarter, according to the New York Fed, and that was before this month’s move. A line that costs more every month is harder to keep current, and a harder-to-keep-current line is a bigger problem on the day a house has to sell for less than what’s owed on it.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I work, and distressed property is most of what comes through the door here. Happy to talk through where your situation fits into any of this.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 My Way Out of Being Behind on My Mortgage Payments?

Probably not, and the door for that closed a little further this week. A refinance is a new loan, and a new loan gets underwritten before anything else happens. Somebody 60 or 90 days behind usually fails the payment history test before the rate or the equity ever get looked at.

How Much Did Mortgage Rates Move This Week?

Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey printed at noon Eastern on September 17, and the 30 year fixed rate averaged 6.95 percent, up from 6.76 percent the week before. A year ago it was 6.26 percent. The 15 year rate averaged 6.26 percent, up from 6.09 percent.

One week alone is noise. Four in a row is a direction.

August 27: 6.66 percent

September 3: 6.71 percent

September 10: 6.76 percent

September 17: 6.95 percent

The jump in the last week is bigger than the previous three weeks put together, and those three only added up to eleven basis points between them.

Is 6.95 Percent What I’d Actually Be Offered?

No, and that’s worth being clear about before anything else. Freddie Mac’s own survey covers conventional, conforming, fully amortizing purchase loans for borrowers who put 20 percent down and carry excellent credit. It isn’t a quote for anybody with thin equity, damaged credit, or an FHA or VA loan, and it isn’t what a lender would put in front of somebody trying to refinance out of a missed payment.

Why Can’t I Just Refinance to Catch Up?

Because a refinance isn’t a repair. It’s a brand new loan, and a new loan asks three questions: what’s the equity, what’s the income, and what’s the payment history. Somebody behind on payments usually fails the third one before a lender even looks at the first two. And a rate from 2021 near 4 percent would be getting traded for something close to 7 percent even for a borrower who passed every test.

What Do I Do Instead If I’m Behind?

Loss mitigation with the servicer you already have. That’s a different call to a different department than the one that handles a refinance, and it’s built for somebody who’s behind rather than somebody shopping for a better deal. What it can look like varies by loan and by lender: a repayment plan, a modification, a short sale if the numbers don’t work any other way. Which one applies comes down to the loan documents and the servicer, not a general rule.

Also of note today, a homebuilder’s own numbers landed this week and they cut the other way in Florida.

Does a Builder Cutting Prices Mean I’m Underwater?

Not automatically, and the Florida number actually moved up, not down.

What Happened With Lennar’s Prices?

Lennar, one of the two largest homebuilders in the country, reported its third quarter on September 16. The average sales price of the homes it delivered nationally was $372,000, down from $383,000 a year earlier. New orders fell 9 percent to 20,879 homes. Stuart Miller, the company’s executive chairman and CEO, put it plainly in the release: “Our average sales price was $372,000, reflecting approximately 12.0% in incentives, along with base price adjustments necessary to sustain volume in a market where affordability remains the defining constraint.”

Is Florida Part of That Drop?

No. Lennar breaks its numbers into four regions, and its East division, which covers Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania together, is the one region where average sales price went up year over year, on both the homes it delivered and the orders it took.

East (Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania): $372,000, up from $366,000

Central: $365,000, down from $379,000

South Central: $230,000, down from $235,000

West: $571,000, down from $599,000

National total: $372,000, down from $383,000

The national number is being pulled down by the West and Central regions. East went the other way.

How Do I Know If I’m Actually Underwater?

Arithmetic, not a headline. What’s owed today against what the house would bring after costs. A builder discounting new construction nearby can put pressure on the comparable sales around it over time, since new closings in a subdivision become the comps for the resales next door. But a national average sales price falling doesn’t mean a Florida house lost value, and the way to find out is a payoff figure and a real look at the comparable sales, not a builder’s press release.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I work, and distressed property is most of what comes through the door here. Happy to talk through where your situation fits into any of this.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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.

Is Florida the Worst State for Foreclosures?

Not anymore, and that’s new as of this morning. Florida held the nation’s worst foreclosure rate through the first half of 2026, and that’s still the number showing up in most of the coverage sitting on Google right now. ATTOM’s fresh August numbers move Florida to third. It still leads the country on a different measurement, just not the one behind those earlier headlines.

What Changed Between the Summer Numbers and Now?

The “worst in the nation” headlines trace back to ATTOM’s first half of 2026 report: 27,494 Florida properties with a foreclosure filing between January and June, a rate of 0.27 percent of housing units, the highest of any state at the time. That’s the number several Florida news outlets ran with in July, and it’s the number Google’s own AI summary is still pulling forward.

ATTOM’s August 2026 report, released this morning, tells a different story. By rate, Florida now ranks third, one filing for every 2,397 housing units, behind South Carolina at one in 1,547 and Nevada at one in 1,920. The state that had the worst rate in the country over six months isn’t the state with the worst rate this month.

So Is Florida Still Number One at Anything?

Yes, on raw count. Florida led the nation in foreclosure starts in August: 3,189, ahead of Texas at 3,126, California at 2,565, Illinois at 1,192 and Georgia at 1,189. A rate divides by how many houses exist in the state. A raw count doesn’t. Florida is a big state, so it produces a big count on that second measure almost by default. Being first in starts and third in rate aren’t in conflict. They’re two different rulers, and the coverage that only tracked one of them for most of the year is why the “worst in the nation” line is still circulating.

How Many Florida Foreclosures Actually Happened in August?

ATTOM counts properties that picked up at least one foreclosure filing during the month, across default, auction and bank repossession, in more than 3,000 counties covering over 99 percent of the country. Nationally, 40,277 properties had a filing in August, up 1 percent from July and up 13 percent from a year ago. Lenders started the process on 25,894 properties, and Florida’s 3,189 starts were part of that. Lenders took back 5,794 properties through completed foreclosures nationally, up 42 percent from a year ago. That 42 percent is a real increase, and it’s also on a small base. ATTOM’s own release says overall foreclosure volume is still well below where it ran before the 2020 to 2022 period.

The most extreme number in the report isn’t a state, it’s a metro: Punta Gorda, on Florida’s southwest coast in Charlotte County, posted the second worst foreclosure rate of any metro in the country, one filing for every 1,249 housing units. That’s a different market than Northeast Florida, but it’s a reminder that a statewide number can hide a lot of variation underneath it.

If Home Prices Are Still Rising, Why Are Foreclosures Going Up Too?

Florida Realtors released its August statistics the same week. The statewide single family median sale price rose just over 1 percent to $415,000, the sixth straight month of year over year gains. Inventory fell 13 percent from a year earlier. Dr. Brad O’Connor, the group’s chief economist, put it this way: “Sales remain relatively stable, inventory continues to tighten, and home prices are holding up well despite mortgage rates that remain challenging for many buyers.”

Those two releases aren’t arguing with each other. Florida Realtors counts what sold and what it sold for. ATTOM counts court and county filings on people who stopped paying. A household stops paying because of what happened to its own income, not because of what happened to the statewide median, so a market that’s holding and a foreclosure count that’s climbing can run side by side for a long time.

What Does This Mean if You’re Behind on Payments?

The rising median and the shrinking inventory are the useful half of this, if there’s equity in the house. A home that can sell before it reaches the end of the foreclosure process usually does, and right now homes are selling. Where there isn’t enough equity to cover what’s owed, a short sale is the option that closes that gap, selling the house for less than the balance, with the lender’s approval.

Foreclosure starts are up 7 percent over the year, and completed repossessions are up 42 percent off that smaller base, which means more files are running all the way through rather than getting resolved earlier. Neither number tells you what happens on any one house. That comes down to the loan documents, the lender, and how much room is actually left.

In other news, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates yesterday afternoon for the first time in three years, and if you’re behind on payments, here’s where that does and doesn’t reach you.

Will My Mortgage Payment Go Up Now That the Fed Raised Rates?

If you have a fixed rate mortgage, no. It can’t. The rate is written into the note you signed, and the Fed doesn’t have a hand on it.

On September 16, the Federal Open Market Committee voted 12 to 0 to raise the federal funds target range a quarter point, to 3-3/4 to 4 percent. That’s an overnight rate banks charge each other. It isn’t your mortgage rate, and it isn’t even the prime rate, which is a separate number that banks set themselves and the Fed only reports.

Which of My Debts Actually Move When the Fed Raises Rates?

The ones priced off a short term index; mainly a home equity line of credit. The CFPB’s own HELOC guide is direct about it: a HELOC typically carries a variable rate built from two pieces, an index and a margin, and the most common indexes are the prime rate and the Treasury’s constant maturity rate. The booklet also says plainly that monthly payments can change even if you never draw another dollar against the line.

That exposure isn’t small. The New York Fed’s household debt report for the second quarter of 2026 put total HELOC balances at $459 billion, up $13 billion in the quarter and $48 billion over the year. Mortgage balances actually fell $74 billion in the same quarter, to $13.117 trillion. And the share of mortgage debt flowing into serious delinquency ran at 1.52 percent in the second quarter, against 1.29 percent a year earlier. That’s a flow into new trouble, not a share of all mortgages that are behind.

What About Rates on a New Loan?

Those were already climbing before the Fed acted, and for a different reason: the 10 year Treasury yield, which sat at 5.00 percent on September 15, up from 4.83 percent less than a week earlier. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly survey, for the week ending September 11, put the average 30 year conforming rate at 6.97 percent, up from 6.85 the week before. Joel Kan, the group’s deputy chief economist, described it plainly: “Ongoing market concerns over spiking energy prices, persistently high inflation, and future monetary policy pushed bond yields and mortgage rates higher last week.” Applications fell 4.1 percent that same week.

What Does This Mean if You Have a Second Mortgage or a HELOC?

The same CFPB guide says a lender can freeze or reduce a credit line if the home’s value drops or your financial situation gets worse, and that when a home sells, the HELOC generally has to be paid off in full at closing. A falling value, a frozen line, and a balance that has to clear at the closing table: that’s the shape of a file that stalls, and it’s usually the second lien deciding it, not the first mortgage everybody assumes is the problem.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I work, and distressed property is most of what comes through the door here. Happy to talk through where your situation fits into any of this.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 Builder Is Offering Me a 4 Percent Mortgage Rate. What’s the Catch?

The catch is simple: the builder is paying to lower your rate instead of lowering the price. The house still costs what it always cost. Your payment just got cheaper, which means you can qualify to borrow more against that same payment, and that’s the part worth slowing down for.

Why Would a Builder Do This Instead of Just Cutting the Price?

Because it’s cheaper for them. The American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center estimates that buying a mortgage rate down by one percentage point costs a builder roughly 3.2 percent of the sale price. Getting a buyer the same monthly payment relief through an actual price cut would take a price cut of roughly 10 percent. Same result for your payment either way. A third of the cost to the builder if they do it through the rate. And the number on the contract never moves.

That’s the whole mechanism. It’s not a trick, exactly. It’s a builder picking the cheaper of two ways to make a house feel affordable, and picking the one that also protects the price on every other lot in the subdivision.

How Big Is the Rate Gap Right Now?

Realtor.com looked at August listings nationally and found nearly one in seven new construction listings advertised a reduced interest rate. The average advertised rate was 3.92 percent. The typical rate for everybody else that month was 6.67 percent. On a median priced $450,000 new home with 20 percent down, that gap works out to about $614 a month, close to $7,400 a year. That’s real money.

If you’re looking at new construction here in Florida, or anywhere a builder is working to move inventory, this is the trade you’re being handed. Worth saying plainly: 3.92 percent is the rate advertised on the listing, not necessarily the rate you’d close at. Treat it as the number that gets you in the door, then confirm it with your own loan officer.

Does the Cheaper Payment Mean I Can Just Borrow More for Free?

Not for free. It means you can qualify to carry more debt for the same monthly payment, and that’s a different thing. Realtor.com ran the 3.92 percent rate against the 6.67 percent market rate across the ten metros where builder rate deals were most common, and found a buyer who keeps the same monthly payment instead of banking the savings can end up supporting roughly $95,000 to $184,000 more in mortgage debt. That’s a ceiling on what the payment allows, not a number that says you have to borrow that much. Nobody’s forcing the extra debt on you. The rate just makes it available.

Joel Berner, the Realtor.com senior economist who wrote the analysis, put the risk in plain terms: a bigger loan balance combined with home prices that later slip can leave a buyer owing more than the house is worth.

Where Are These Rate Deals Showing Up the Most?

Not evenly. Only about 1.4 percent of new homes priced between $100,000 and $200,000 carried a reduced rate. The share climbs as the price climbs, and peaks around 17.1 percent of homes between $500,000 and $750,000, then 15.8 percent between $750,000 and $1 million. Realtor.com reads that as move-up territory, where a buyer already owns a house with a low rate and has to give it up to buy the next one. Roughly 88 percent of existing owners with a mortgage still carry a rate below 6 percent, which is exactly the group these deals are built to pry loose.

Is the Cheap Rate Propping Up New Home Prices?

Realtor.com tested for it and didn’t find a clean answer, and that’s worth saying plainly rather than rounding it into a bigger claim than it is. Nationally, new construction listing prices were down 0.3 percent year over year in August against 2.5 percent for resale, which points one direction. But metro by metro it splits. Among the ten metros where these rate deals were most common, new construction prices beat resale in four of them and lost to it in six. Denver’s new home prices fell 1.6 percent against 5.7 percent for resale. Durham and Chapel Hill ran the other way, new homes down 8.5 percent against 1.2 percent for resale. The mechanism for propping up a price is real. Proof that it’s actually happening broadly isn’t there yet.

What Should I Check Before I Sign Anything?

The appraisal. Freddie Mac has told appraisers to account for financing and sales concessions when they’re comparing sale prices, because a builder can use a rate buydown in a new subdivision to, in Freddie’s own words, drive interest and support higher prices. Joseph Pravettone, chief appraiser at Atlas VMS, told Realtor.com the same thing in plainer language: concessions and rate buydowns aren’t free, they’re price influencers, and skipping that step in an appraisal risks backing a contract price that doesn’t actually reflect what the home is worth.

One of the people Realtor.com talked to for this piece is Jon Brooks, a co-founder of Momentum Realty, which is my own brokerage. He wasn’t the source of any of the figures above. He was quoted on what happens to the other side of this trade. His point: buy at a discounted builder rate, and if life makes you sell sooner than planned, you lose that rate the day you list. Then you’re competing against the builder’s own new inventory next door, carrying its own fresh incentive, while your resale has to stand on a market that’s already priced high.

What This Means for You

A cheaper monthly payment is a real benefit. Nobody’s saying to walk away from it. The point is that the price and the rate are two separate questions, and the sales office has every reason to blend them into one number that sounds good. Ask what the house would cost with a market rate loan. Ask what it would cost with the incentive. Get your own appraisal question answered before you sign, not after. Those are decisions that belong to you, and they’re worth taking slow.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I work, and distressed property is most of what comes through the door here. Happy to talk through where your situation fits into any of this.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 Have to Pay Someone to Get My Foreclosure Surplus Money in Florida?

No. Florida puts that in writing on the claim form itself: you’re allowed to claim your own surplus money, no lawyer or anyone else required. If you do let someone help you, the law puts a hard number on what they’re allowed to take from you for it.

What Is Foreclosure Surplus Money?

When a Florida house sells at the foreclosure auction for more than what was owed, the leftover belongs to the person who lost the house. I wrote a couple weeks back about who that money actually goes to and the one year clock on claiming it. This one’s about what happens once somebody offers to go get it for you, because that’s usually the call that comes in first.

What Does the Judgment Itself Warn Me About?

The final judgment has to carry a notice, in capital letters, telling you there may be money left over after the sale. Where the home carried the homestead exemption on the most recent tax roll, a second block gets added, and it says the same thing the claim form does: you can claim the money yourself, you don’t need a lawyer or anyone else, and you don’t have to assign your rights to anybody. It also tells you to read carefully anything you’re asked to sign, and to get somebody else, preferably an attorney who isn’t related to whoever’s offering to help, to look it over first. The Legislature wrote that warning into the judgment on purpose, because it knew who’d be showing up at the door.

What Has to Be in the Agreement if I Do Bring Someone In?

Florida law treats this as a formal assignment, and it only qualifies if the paperwork does real work. It has to be in writing. It has to disclose the assessed value of the house, the approximate debt against it, and the approximate equity, and if it’s signed after the sale, the sale price and the surplus amount too. It has to say plainly that you don’t need an attorney. It has to spell out every single thing you’re being paid or asked to pay. And it has to be filed with the court within 60 days of the certificate of disbursements.

What Does the 12 Percent Cap Actually Cover?

On a qualifying assignment, the total anyone can be paid, owed, or expecting to earn off your surplus is capped at 12 percent of it. That’s a ceiling on that one kind of deal, not a going rate and not a stamp of approval on the arrangement itself. Two things sit right next to that cap in the statute. A court can still pay someone whose paperwork falls short of qualifying, if the deal was made in good faith with no intent to defraud you. And at the hearing where entitlement gets decided, the burden is on whoever’s claiming to have your rights to prove they actually do. It isn’t on you.

How Does This Work in Duval County?

Duval’s Clerk of Courts publishes an Owner’s Claim for Mortgage Foreclosure Surplus form and keeps a separate Unclaimed Funds page. The Clerk’s office is barred from giving legal advice, and Florida law also allows the clerk to help an owner put a claim together. Both of those are true at once and they aren’t in conflict. One is what the office can’t do. The other is what it can.

What This Means if You’re Waiting on a Surplus

Whether there’s a dollar sitting with the clerk on your own case, and how much, isn’t something a general article can tell you. That sits with whichever county’s clerk handled the sale. What the statute settles is the part people usually get told by whoever shows up first: you don’t have to pay anyone to get your own money, and if you choose to, the law limits what that costs you.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I work, and distressed property is most of what comes through the door here. Happy to talk through where your situation fits into any of this.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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.

If My House Goes to Foreclosure Auction, Does Anybody Actually Buy It?

Nationally, the odds a stranger buys your house at auction instead of the bank taking it back are better than they were a year ago. In Southwest Florida, they’re some of the worst in the country. Both of those come from the same report, and which one applies to you comes down to a number you’ll probably never see in advance.

What Actually Decides Whether Somebody Buys It or the Bank Takes It Back?

When your lender takes a house to a foreclosure sale, it sets an opening bid before anybody shows up. That number is called a credit bid, and it’s usually set against what’s still owed on the loan. Set it near the house’s full value and no investor can make the math work, so nobody outbids it and the bank ends up owning the house again. Set it lower, and a third party buys it that day.

Auction.com runs the marketplace where a large share of the country’s foreclosure sales and bank-owned resales actually happen, and it publishes what moved across its platform every quarter. Everything below comes from Auction.com’s own marketplace, not a count of every foreclosure sale in the country. It’s a large slice, not the whole pie.

Are Foreclosure Auctions Actually Going Up?

On Auction.com’s marketplace, completed foreclosure auctions in the second quarter sat at 66% of where they were in the first quarter of 2020, up 23% from a year earlier. Scheduled auctions (sales put on the calendar) reached 71% of that pre-pandemic level, up 13% year over year and the highest in more than six years. Both numbers have now climbed year over year for six quarters running. None of that is a count of houses. Auction.com publishes no property counts in this report, only how today compares to a 2020 benchmark.

What Kind of Loans Are Showing Up at Auction?

Auctions on VA-backed loans are at 106% of their pre-pandemic level, up 14%. FHA loans are at 95%, up 47% in a year. Loans backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac are at 68%, up 27%. Government-backed borrowers are the ones showing up most, and most of them couldn’t tell you which of those three programs they actually have.

Then there’s the age of the loan itself. Loans written in 2022 or later made up 45% of every foreclosure auction in the quarter, the largest share of any origination year, and up 104% from a year ago. Loans from the 2005 to 2009 crash years were 10% and falling. That’s not the old distress finally working its way out. It’s people who bought at the top of the market four years ago, at the price and the payment that came with it, and have run out of room since. That 45% describes a share of what showed up at auction. It says nothing about what percentage of all 2022 loans are in trouble.

Does Florida Match What’s Happening Nationally?

No, and it doesn’t contradict the national number either. Florida is named as one of the highest-volume states in the country for completed foreclosure auctions. Florida is also on the list of states whose volume is still below where it was in the first quarter of 2020, alongside Georgia, Illinois, Ohio and California. Texas, Arizona, Minnesota, Louisiana and Colorado are the ones running above their 2020 levels. Big and rising isn’t the same as worse than it used to be, and Auction.com’s own report puts both of those in the same paragraph.

What About Cape Coral, Tampa, and Pensacola?

Three Florida metros get named individually in the report, and two of them show up twice.

Cape Coral and Fort Myers had one of the five lowest foreclosure sales rates in the country, and one of the five highest seller credit bids, above 73% of value. Those are the same fact said two ways. When the opening bid gets set that high, almost nothing sells to a third party, and the house goes back to the lender.

Tampa had one of the highest levels of buyer willingness to pay in the country, and it was also on the short list of markets where seller pricing went up during the quarter. Pensacola shows up on both of those same lists.

So if the question is whether anybody buys your house at the auction, the honest Florida answer right now depends on the county, and on what your lender decides to open the bidding at. That number isn’t public before the sale.

What’s the Rest of the Country Seeing?

Lenders, on average, priced lower this quarter. Seller pricing dropped from the prior quarter in 69 of the 99 metro areas Auction.com measured, and the gap between what lenders were asking and what buyers would actually pay narrowed by more than 300 basis points in a single quarter. Buyers responded. The share of auctions that actually sold rose 12% from the prior quarter, to 114% of the 2020 benchmark.

One more number worth sitting with. The share of bank-owned auctions on vacant houses is near a six-year high, at 54%. More than half of what banks are reselling had already been walked away from before the sale ever happened.

So What Does This Mean If My House Is Headed to Auction?

Nothing here tells you what your own lender will set as its opening number, and nothing here predicts what happens to your file. What it does say is that nationally, more of these sales are going to third-party buyers than they were a year ago, and in parts of Florida, especially Southwest Florida, they mostly aren’t. Where your house lands inside that depends on your county and on a number your lender hasn’t published anywhere.

Jacksonville, Florida is where I work, and distressed property is most of what comes through the door here. Happy to talk through where your situation fits into any of this.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 Reapply for a Loan Modification After My Lender Turns Me Down?

Yes, but a rule taking effect this month changes what counts as a real second try. If you have an FHA loan and you’re behind, filing the same request twice used to buy you time while it got reviewed again. Starting September 21, 2026, that only holds up if something about your situation has actually changed.

What’s Changing on September 21?

HUD signed this update, Mortgagee Letter 2026-08, on June 23 and gave FHA servicers until September 21, 2026 to have it in place. I read the letter in full at hud.gov rather than a summary of it. Before this, a borrower turned down for help could keep filing new requests, and each complete one paused foreclosure while it was under review again. Under the new language, once a servicer finishes reviewing your first complete request, it can move toward foreclosure. Filing again only holds that off if you can show your circumstances changed since the first try, in a way that affects what you might qualify for now. September 21 is the deadline, not the start date. Some servicers may already be operating this way.

Does This Apply to My Loan?

Only if it’s FHA-insured. This rule doesn’t reach conventional loans, VA loans, USDA loans, or anything backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Most people don’t carry their loan type around in their head, so this is worth a direct question to your servicer before anything else here matters to you.

It’s also not a Florida rule. Florida forecloses through the courts, under a separate process in Chapter 702, and nothing here changes that timeline. This rule lives earlier, inside how your servicer reviews your file before a case is ever filed.

What Counts as a Change in Circumstances?

HUD’s letter doesn’t hand servicers a checklist for this, which makes it worth asking about directly rather than guessing. The practical question is the one to bring to your servicer: what would have to be different about your situation for a new application to count as a new one, rather than the same file again? A job loss, a change in income, or a new hardship are the kind of things that could shift the answer. Filing the same numbers a second time because nothing has changed is exactly what this rule is built to stop counting.

What Happens If I Miss a Payment on a Trial Plan?

A trial payment plan is the stretch of on-time payments FHA has you complete before it will finalize a permanent modification. Three months for most borrowers, four if you’re in imminent default rather than already behind, six if you inherited the home through certain transfers. Starting September 21, refusing one of these plans three times during the same default carries a real consequence: the third refusal is recorded as a failure.

A plan also fails if a scheduled payment doesn’t arrive by the last day of the month it’s due, not the due date itself, the end of that month. Telling your servicer up front the terms won’t be met, or the property being condemned or abandoned, fails it too. Once it fails, the servicer has to report that, whether or not it offers you another trial plan afterward.

Do I Have to Sign the Trial Plan Agreement?

No. HUD’s letter says you’re not required to sign and return it. Sending in the first payment, at or above the amount required, counts as accepting it. Your servicer also has to hand you the agreement at least 15 days before that first payment comes due, and late charges get waived while payments are being made as agreed.

That also means not paying is how a trial plan gets refused, which is the same thing that can now count against someone three times over.

What Happens If a Trial Plan Fails?

If a trial plan fails and you don’t qualify for another way to keep the home, the servicer has to evaluate you for what FHA calls Home Disposition Options, its category for the choices that don’t end in keeping the house. HUD also gives the servicer an automatic 90 days to approve something else or to start or restart foreclosure. That 90 days belongs to the servicer’s own timeline. It isn’t time built in for you to plan around.

What’s Worth Asking Your Servicer Before the 21st?

Two questions carry more weight than anything else here. What would have to be different about your situation for a new application to count as new. And whether your servicer is already operating under the updated rule or still working off the old one. Either answer changes what a second application can actually do for you right now.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through where this sits for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 Switch Homeowners Insurance If It’s Paid Through My Mortgage Escrow?

Yes. Your mortgage company doesn’t pick your insurance carrier, and switching doesn’t touch your loan. Last year, the people who did it saved real money over the people who didn’t.

What Does Switching Carriers Actually Save?

ICE released its September 2026 Mortgage Monitor yesterday, and it tracked what happened to homeowners who shopped their insurance against homeowners who stayed put. People who switched carriers over the past year paid 6.6 percent less on average, the largest saving ICE has recorded since it started tracking this measure in 2013. People who stayed with their existing carrier paid 10.4 percent more. That gap runs $440 a year, and it didn’t come from buying thinner coverage: deductibles for switchers actually fell 1.4 percent while coverage limits rose 7.3 percent.

Why Would My Payment Move If My Rate Never Did?

I wrote about this same mechanism a few days ago, when Citizens’ flood insurance mandate started showing up in people’s escrow accounts. Property insurance is the same story at a bigger scale: it sits inside your escrow account, not your interest rate, so a heavier premium shows up as a shortage letter and a higher payment even on a loan that never repriced.

Today’s number is why that keeps happening more than it used to. Property insurance for the average mortgaged homeowner nationally hit $209 a month in ICE’s release, 9.6 percent of the average payment and nearly 80 percent higher than where it stood at the start of 2020.

The growth is slowing. Premiums rose 8.7 percent year over year in the latest data, down from 11.4 percent at the start of this year and a peak of 15.1 percent at the end of 2024. A slower climb on a bigger number is still a bigger number.

Is the Increase Coming From Higher Rates or More Coverage?

Mostly coverage. ICE reports that coverage limits rose 5.5 percent and account for roughly two thirds of the past year’s increase. The cost per $1,000 of coverage itself rose about 3 percent. That’s more a rebuilding-cost story than a plain rate hike, and ICE calls it a reversal from 2024, when repricing drove most of the increase.

Does Every Market Look Like This?

No. ICE puts insurance at 24.3 percent of the average mortgage payment in New Orleans and 4.3 percent in San Jose. The steepest year-over-year increases in this release are Greenville, South Carolina at 15.8 percent, Honolulu at 14.7 percent and Minneapolis at 13.1 percent, with Sacramento and San Diego both near 12 percent. ICE ties a lot of the fastest increases to markets that took recent hurricanes, wildfires or hail. Miami, one of the two most expensive insurance markets in the country by ICE’s count, saw one of the smaller annual increases, though ICE didn’t publish an exact figure for it. Nothing in this release breaks out Florida statewide or Northeast Florida specifically, so those numbers don’t exist to quote here.

How Do I Switch When My Mortgage Company Pays the Bill?

You shop it the same way you would if you paid it yourself: get quotes, compare coverage, then tell your servicer once you’ve picked a new policy. Most servicers want a declarations page from the new carrier before they’ll update who gets paid out of escrow. What happens to the refund from your old policy, and how your servicer reworks the escrow number afterward, tends to vary by lender. That part’s worth a direct call to whoever services your loan rather than a guess.

In other news, something is on the ballot this November that a lot of Florida homeowners are going to hear about all fall and assume already applies to them.

Are Florida Property Taxes Going Down Next Year?

Not yet, and not for anyone behind on payments right now. Amendment 3 is on the November 3, 2026 ballot, it needs at least 60 percent plus one of the vote to pass, and if it passes, it doesn’t take effect until January 1, 2027.

What Would Amendment 3 Actually Change?

It would raise the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, adjusted for inflation starting in 2029. It would also cut the annual cap on assessment increases for non-homestead property, which covers rentals, second homes and commercial real estate, from 10 percent to 5 percent. The campaign says it would also direct local property tax revenue toward public safety, schools, infrastructure and government operations, and require the Legislature to build a process for counties and cities to raise the homestead exemption further.

Does It Affect School Taxes?

No. The expanded exemption applies only to non-school property taxes. The Legislature carved the K-12 portion out of the bill before passing it.

Who Supports Amendment 3 and Who’s Against It?

Florida Realtors launched a Vote Yes on 3 campaign and, per campaign finance records reported by News Service of Florida, put $10 million into the Yes on 3 political committee. Florida Realtors is the campaign’s largest funder and also the publisher behind the member-facing explanation of what the amendment does, which is worth knowing if you’re reading their summary of it. Vote No on 3, chaired by former Leon County Commissioner Bryan Desloge, has raised nearly $150,000, including $100,000 from the Florida Association of Special Districts, which represents the state’s 1,900 local taxing districts that fund fire control, mosquito control, hospitals and community development. A number of local officials, especially in rural areas, have said the amendment would cut into their ability to fund basic services.

What Does This Mean If I’m Behind Right Now?

The clock on the amendment and the clock on a missed payment don’t run together. The vote is in November, the earliest effective date is January 1, 2027, and a payment that’s late this month doesn’t wait for either one. Property taxes and insurance both ride in the same escrow account, which is part of why they end up tangled together in the same payment letter, and it can be hard to tell which one moved without asking.

Jacksonville is where I work, and distressed property is most of what comes across my desk. Happy to talk through where either of these lands for you.

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

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.

Is Anyone Still Moving to Jacksonville?

Yes, and by one bank’s count it sped up. A chart getting passed around this week to argue the opposite, that Florida’s migration reversal is “getting ugly,” is measuring outflow from other Florida metros. Jacksonville isn’t even on that chart. It’s on a different one, next to Dallas and Nashville, on the list of fastest-growing metros in the country.

What’s the Post Actually Claiming?

A post that racked up over 660,000 views over the weekend said Florida’s biggest metros are hemorrhaging people, named Tampa, Orlando and Miami as all having lost population in the second quarter, and claimed Orlando and Miami lost more people than New York. It got quote-posted and amplified from there.

The chart behind it is Exhibit 4 from a Bank of America Institute report called “On the move: Renovation over relocation?”, published August 28. The exhibit’s own printed title reads: “There’s been a deceleration in the population outflows across most major Florida MSAs.”

Deceleration is the opposite of what the post said it showed.

What Does Bank of America’s Own Report Say?

Their paragraph underneath that exhibit, word for word: “Miami wasn’t the only Florida city where outflows moderated. Across the state’s other major metros, Orlando recorded a slight deceleration in outflows, while Tampa’s ground to a halt. Meanwhile, population growth accelerated in Jacksonville.”

Tampa is on that exhibit, and it sits at the bottom of the list of 25 metros, right next to zero. Jacksonville isn’t on Exhibit 4 at all. It’s on Exhibit 3, the list of the fastest-growing metros in the country.

There’s also a claim in the post that the chart can’t back up. Exhibit 4 plots year-over-year percent change. It carries no headcount, and Bank of America publishes none in this report. Saying one city lost more people than another isn’t something a percent-change chart can tell you either way.

Is This a Census Count?

No. It’s Bank of America’s own customers, read off home addresses, for anyone who held an account with them every quarter from the first quarter of 2023 through the second quarter of 2026. Bank of America’s own methodology section says the data “will not capture the impact of international migration,” that it “is not comprehensive,” that it may “reflect a degree of selection bias,” and that Census Bureau figures “will not necessarily align with our data in some MSAs.”

None of that makes the chart wrong. It makes it one bank’s read of where its own customers moved, not a population count of anybody.

What This Means If You’re Behind and Thinking About Selling

Somebody two payments behind who reads “Florida migration bust” this week might decide there’s nobody left to sell to. The report that post is standing on says the opposite about growth in this city specifically.

That’s not the same thing as a buyer for your house. A short sale still needs somebody willing to sit through a lender’s review, sometimes for months, and no migration chart measures patience. What a chart like this can tell you is whether the pool of people moving into an area is shrinking. In Jacksonville, on this data, it isn’t.

In other news, a second thing worth answering plainly today: what happens to a home equity line when the house has to sell for less than what’s owed.

Can I Sell My House if I Have a Home Equity Loan Too?

Yes, but it takes two lenders saying yes instead of one, and the second one doesn’t have to agree just because the first one did.

Does a Home Equity Line Have to Be Paid Off Before I Can Sell?

Yes. A home equity line is a lien, and it sits behind the first mortgage on the same property. Nothing conveys clear title until every lien on the house is released, first and second both. On a sale with enough equity, the closing statement pays both off and nobody thinks twice about it.

What Changes When There Isn’t Enough Money to Pay Both Off?

I wrote about how a second lien complicates a short sale back on August 12. The new piece this week is the arithmetic underneath it.

The first mortgage servicer usually sets a cap on how much of the sale proceeds it will let the seller pay out to a junior lienholder. The junior lender knows what that cap is going in. It’s being asked to release its claim on the house for a fraction of what it’s owed, sometimes for close to nothing, and it doesn’t have to agree. That negotiation runs on its own timeline, separate from the first lender’s approval, and it’s usually the part nobody warned the seller about going in.

What’s the Difference Between the Lien Being Released and the Debt Being Forgiven?

They’re two different things, and a lender can do one without the other. A junior lender can take a reduced payoff, release its lien so the sale closes, and still hold you to the note for the rest. Which one actually happened is written into the approval letter, in language that doesn’t look like it matters until it does.

What Should You Ask For Before Anything Else Gets Decided?

The current payoff on the second loan, not the balance printed on last month’s statement. A number that’s out of date by even a few weeks can be the difference between a deal that pencils and one that doesn’t.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through where either of these sits for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 Have to Buy Flood Insurance If I’m Not in a Flood Zone?

Yes, if your home insurance is a Citizens policy that includes wind coverage. The requirement has been phasing in since 2023, sorted by how expensive the house is, and on January 1, 2027 the phase-in ends and it applies to every policy Citizens writes, whatever the house is worth.

That date is about 115 days out. If you’re not in a FEMA flood zone, you’re the last group it reaches, and the cheapest houses on Citizens’ book are the last ones caught.

Why Is My Insurance Company Telling Me I Need Flood Insurance If I’m Not in a Flood Zone?

Because the requirement never depended on the flood zone tag to begin with. It’s coming from state law, not from FEMA’s map.

Citizens has been phasing this in since 2023 for every Personal Residential policy that includes wind coverage. Inside a FEMA-designated Special Flood Hazard Area, it already applies, no phase-in. Outside one, Citizens has been rolling it out by the dwelling’s replacement value: $600,000 and up starting January 1, 2024. $500,000 and up starting January 1, 2025. $400,000 and up starting this January 1, 2026. On January 1, 2027, the value line disappears and the requirement reaches every policy Citizens writes with wind coverage, regardless of what the house is worth or where it sits.

Citizens states the legal basis on its own flood page: “In compliance with Florida Statute 627.715, most of Citizens’ new and renewing Personal Residential policies that include wind coverage must also have and maintain flood insurance coverage by January 1, 2027, under a phased-in approach created by the Florida Legislature in December 2022.”

What Happens If I Don’t Buy Flood Insurance?

You lose the policy, not just the flood piece.

Citizens says it plainly: “If you don’t wish to purchase flood insurance, you will not be eligible for a Personal Lines residential policy with Citizens.” It’s not a fine or a surcharge tacked onto your bill. It’s an eligibility requirement, the same category as anything else that determines whether Citizens will write or renew your policy at all.

What Do I Actually Have to Turn In?

Proof of flood coverage, plus a signed form.

The form is the Policyholder Affirmation Regarding Flood Insurance, CIT FW01. Proof can be your flood policy’s declarations page, a submitted application showing you’ve paid for a flood policy that’s still pending, or, if you’re on a Citizens wind-only policy, a flood endorsement on your other multiperil policy that meets Citizens’ minimum standard.

How Much Flood Coverage Do I Need?

Coverage equal to or greater than your Citizens Coverage A, the dwelling limit on your wind policy.

Where the National Flood Insurance Program won’t write that high, Citizens accepts the maximum you’re eligible for instead: $250,000 of Coverage A on NFIP’s regular program, $35,000 on the emergency program.

Is Anybody Exempt?

Three groups, stated twice on Citizens’ own page: condominium unit-owner policies, tenant content policies, and any policy that excludes windstorm or hail coverage entirely.

If your policy doesn’t carry wind, none of this applies to you.

What Does Flood Insurance Actually Cost?

Citizens doesn’t sell it and doesn’t publish a number, so there isn’t one to give you here.

Flood coverage runs through the National Flood Insurance Program, not through Citizens, and the premium depends on the property, the elevation and the coverage level. The way to find out is to call your agent, pull your Citizens declarations page, and find out which side of the January 1, 2027 line your policy sits on. If your dwelling value already put you in this year’s group, you may already be past due.

What Does This Do to a Payment That’s Already Escrowed?

Same mechanism I walked through in August: the new premium doesn’t arrive as its own bill you get to weigh against your budget. It goes into your escrow account, the account runs short against what was funded for last year, and the annual analysis spreads that shortage across the payments in front of you while raising the monthly amount going forward. A fixed-rate loan can still see its payment climb with the interest rate untouched.

The difference this time is that a lot of people who’ve never carried flood insurance are about to see it show up as a new line item on a known date, not a renewal that crept a little higher.

In other news, a market question worth answering plainly: does listing your house buy you any protection from the bank.

If My House Is Already Listed, Can the Bank Still Foreclose on Me?

Yes. Listing your house doesn’t stop a foreclosure case, slow it down, or put it on hold.

Florida forecloses through the courts. Florida Statute 702.01 puts every mortgage foreclosure in the state in front of a judge, in equity. A listing agreement is a contract between you and a broker. It’s never filed with the court, it never appears in the case file, and no deadline in that case moves because a sign went into your yard.

How Slow Is the Market Right Now?

Slower than it’s been in years, which matters because it changes how much runway a listing actually buys.

HousingWire’s own data desk put Florida’s active single-family listings at 83,832 for the week ending August 29, up from roughly 53,000 in early 2023 and down some from a peak near 107,000 in mid-2025. Statewide median list price sits at $474,999, down 2.9 percent from $489,000 a year ago. 43.9 percent of those active listings have already taken a price cut. Average days on market is 138.

Around Orlando, Kissimmee and Sanford specifically: 8,887 active listings, median list $485,000, 49 percent already cut once, average 123 days on market.

Veronica Figueroa, CEO of The Fig Team in Orlando, told HousingWire she’s seeing more short sale conversations lately: “we are seeing some distressed properties. We’re starting to see a lot more short sale scenarios of people saying, ‘You know, I’m behind or I’m underwater.’” She’s talking mostly about people who bought in 2023 or near the top of the market.

That 138-day figure is an average across active listings, and it measures time on market, not time to closing. The real gap between putting up a sign and having cash in hand runs longer than the headline number suggests.

What Actually Decides Whether Listing Helps You?

Whether you owe more than the house will bring.

Somebody current on their loan can knock $20,000 off the price on a Tuesday because they feel like it. Somebody who owes more than the house will sell for can’t do that on their own. The money to close still has to come from somewhere, and if the sale price won’t cover the payoff, the lender has to agree to accept less than it’s owed. That’s its own approval process, running on the lender’s timeline, and it happens inside the foreclosure clock rather than instead of it.

What’s Worth Asking Before You Settle on a Price?

The real payoff number, in writing, and exactly where your file sits with the servicer right now. A price set against last year’s payoff, or against what you think you owe instead of what the servicer says you owe, is a price that can run out of road before it closes.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through where either of these sits for you.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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.

What Do I Do If I Can’t Refinance and Can’t Afford My Payment?

The rate you’ve been waiting on might not come. What’s actually available to you sits with your lender, and there’s more on the table before a payment gets missed than after. Waiting on a lower rate has already cost some people four years and a second job.

Why Hasn’t the Rate Come Back Down?

Four years ago the line going around was “date the rate, marry the home.” Buy now, refinance later once rates settle. A lot of people took that seriously.

CNN told the story of Patrice De La Ossa this week. She sold a house in Phoenix carrying a 2.25 percent mortgage and moved to Tucson so her son could live at home while he finished at the University of Arizona. The new place came with a 6.8 percent rate. She figured it was temporary. Her son has since graduated. She’s still on 6.8 percent, paying roughly $900 a month more than the Phoenix loan, on two mortgages she describes as almost identical, and she’s taken a second job to cover the gap.

The rate never came back. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the 30-year at 6.71 percent as of September 3, the highest print of 2026, up from 6.66 the week before and 6.50 a year ago. Mary Lee Blaylock, president of Coldwell Banker Affiliates, told CNN plainly that “date the rate” isn’t how it works anymore. Buyers should plan on living with the rate they sign.

How Much Would Your Rate Need to Drop to Make Refinancing Worth It?

More than most people are sitting on. The rule of thumb CNN quotes, from what it calls many financial advisers, is that a refinance earns its cost when it cuts your rate by a full percentage point. Against a 6.71 percent market, that means the loan you’re refinancing out of needs to be sitting somewhere around 7.7 percent before the trade clears.

Almost everybody who bought in the last four years is somewhere between six and seven. The math doesn’t get there. Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, told CNN the same thing without the arithmetic: at these rates, a refinance doesn’t make sense for most people unless there’s a specific reason for it, like folding in credit card debt or paying for a repair. That’s a rule of thumb, not a lending standard, and it’s worth running against your own loan rather than taking as gospel.

How Many People Are Stuck in the Same Spot?

More than there used to be. Redfin’s read of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s National Mortgage Database found that by the third quarter of 2025, 21.2 percent of mortgaged homeowners were carrying a rate of 6 percent or higher, up from 17.1 percent the year before. Twenty percent were still under 3 percent. That was the first time in five years more homeowners sat above 6 than below 3.

That figure is a year old already, not a live count, and nobody’s published what it looks like today. What it tells you is that this isn’t a small or unusual position to be in. A rising share like that doesn’t mean everybody in it is behind on payments. It means a lot of people are carrying a rate they expected to be temporary, with no evidence the plan is coming back around.

What Do You Do If the Payment Doesn’t Work and the Rate Won’t Either?

Get in front of it before anything’s missed, not after. A refinance is a new loan, and you have to qualify for it, which is a lot easier to do while you’re still current than once you’re behind.

CNN’s other homeowner is a masonry contractor in East Moriches, New York, carrying 7.2 percent on a payment of about $6,000 a month. Three of his six employees stopped working for him this year, his jobs take longer, and his income got less predictable. He told CNN he’s struggling to make payments on the loan he already has. Nobody stops paying a mortgage on its own. It goes unpaid alongside everything else that’s already stretched thin.

That’s the same household at a different stage as the person who bought expecting to refinance. If the payment doesn’t work and the value isn’t there either, the conversation is with your lender about what it will actually consider, and there’s more than one answer to that depending on your loan and your situation. What isn’t on the table anymore is a fifth year of waiting for a rate that hasn’t shown up in four.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through where you stand if any of this sounds close to your own situation.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 Does It Take to Sell a House in Florida Right Now?

Eighty days. That’s the median time a Florida home sits on the market before it comes off, as of August 2026, according to Realtor.com. Not eighty days to sell it. Eighty days on the market, whatever happens to that listing after.

If you’re current on your payments, that’s a market number. If you’re behind, it’s a number with company. A mortgage doesn’t pause because a listing is still sitting there, and if the plan runs through a lender, eighty days can turn out to be the easy half.

What Does 80 Days Actually Measure?

Realtor.com’s August 2026 release puts the median Florida listing price at $419,000, down 3.5% from a year ago and down 8.5% from three years back. The 80-day figure comes from the same release. Both numbers describe what sellers are asking and how long a house sits, not what it eventually brought. Realtor.com doesn’t publish a sale price in this release, and the 80 days doesn’t say whether a listing that comes off the market got a buyer, expired, or was pulled.

Why Bring Up a Retirement Community Three Hours South of Here?

The Villages, the age-restricted community outside Orlando with more than 150,000 residents, has had its median listing price fall for four years running, per Realtor.com. It closed out August 2026 at $377,784. Days on market there is now 60, double the 30 it took in 2022, when the number of homes for sale hit a 10-year low.

The Villages isn’t Northeast Florida, and nothing about its market says anything about Jacksonville, Duval, Clay, St. Johns, or anywhere else around here. What it shows is what a longer slide looks like once one gets going: not a crash, just four straight years of asking less and waiting longer for the same pool of buyers. Realtor.com’s own economist, Joel Berner, said prices there are still higher than before the 2021 rush, but “it has become a challenge to sell homes in The Villages” against recent years.

Does That Clock Stop the Day You Sign a Contract?

Not if the sale is a short sale. Realtor.com’s number tracks time on the market, and a signed contract is usually what ends that. On a short sale, the lender’s review doesn’t start until there’s a signed contract in front of it. Whatever the eighty days measured up to that point was the front half of the job, not the whole thing.

The showings and price cuts are one clock. What a servicer does once it has a complete short sale file is a second clock, and it runs on its own schedule.

Why Isn’t This a Foreclosure Story?

Because nothing in Realtor.com’s release measures foreclosure or how many of the homes behind these numbers belong to someone behind on payments. That’s not in this data anywhere. The connection between a slower market and somebody running out of time is a practitioner read, built from handling distressed Florida property, not a number lifted from this release.

If you’re weighing whether to list now, wait, or look at a short sale, there are two clocks running. The market’s, which is the eighty days. And a Florida foreclosure case’s own calendar in circuit court, which doesn’t slow down because a listing is still sitting there. Different people set each one, and they don’t coordinate.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through where you stand if any of this sounds close to your own situation.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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.

What Happens If I Miss a Payment on My Trial Payment Plan?

One missed payment doesn’t fail a trial payment plan by itself. Missing it three separate times in the same stretch of being behind does now, under a rule every FHA lender has to be running by September 21, sixteen days from today. I read the letter that changed it in full at HUD’s own site this morning.

Do I Have to Sign the Trial Agreement Before It Counts?

No. Sending in the first payment is what accepts it. HUD’s own letter says a borrower isn’t required to sign and return the agreement, that the first installment is the acceptance. Miss that first payment past the last day of the month it was due, and the trial failed right there, no signature involved either way.

How Long Does a Trial Plan Usually Run, and What Do I Get Before It Starts?

Three months for most people. Four months for someone who isn’t behind yet but is heading there. Six months for someone who took title through a transfer without ever being on the loan themselves. Whichever length applies, the servicer has to put the agreement in hand at least 15 days before that first payment is due.

What Actually Changed Under This Rule?

The third strike. HUD sent this letter to every FHA-approved lender on June 23 and said it could be used right away, but had to be running everywhere by September 21. Under it, failing to accept a trial agreement three separate times in the same stretch of being behind counts on its own as a trial payment plan failure, whatever the reason behind any one of those misses. HUD wrote into the letter that it knows there are legitimate reasons someone misses a first payment once. What it’s trying to stop is someone declining a trial over and over.

Can Asking for a Second Review Still Buy Time?

Narrower than it used to be. A servicer can’t file foreclosure until at least three full monthly payments are due and unpaid, and until it’s finished reviewing a complete request for help, said no, and handled the appeal. Asking to be reviewed again has been the move that keeps that clock from running out. Under this letter, a second review only counts toward that protection if something about the person’s circumstances actually changed in a way that affects what they qualify for. The same paperwork with the same numbers a second time doesn’t buy the same pause it used to.

What Happens If the Trial Fails and There’s No Way to Keep the House?

The servicer has to evaluate the borrower for home disposition options. The letter doesn’t spell out in its own text what those options are, so that’s as far as this goes today. It does give the servicer an automatic 90 days after a failed trial before it has to approve something else or move a foreclosure along.

Does Any of This Apply to My Loan?

Only if it’s FHA. Mortgagee Letter 2026-08 applies to FHA-insured Title II single family forward mortgages, and that’s it. It doesn’t touch a conventional, VA, USDA or portfolio loan, and it doesn’t change anything about how a Florida foreclosure itself runs once one’s filed. That’s still its own lawsuit in front of a judge either way. A lot of people who are behind couldn’t say offhand which kind of loan they have. This rule only reaches one of them.

Taxes and insurance can move during a trial, so the letter adds permission for the monthly payment to change between the trial and whatever permanent plan follows it. Anybody who’s opened a Florida insurance renewal in the last year knows how fast that number moves on its own.

None of this says what a particular servicer will actually do with a particular file. It says what the rulebook lets them do, and when. Where somebody stands against that count depends on their own loan and their own servicer, and most people have no idea they’re being counted at all.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through where you stand if any of this sounds close to your own situation.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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.

If My House Sells at a Foreclosure Auction, Do I Get Any of the Money?

Maybe, and it’s probably more than you’d think. Once a foreclosure sale pays off the mortgage and whatever else is owed against the house, the leftover money doesn’t just vanish. Florida law says it belongs to whoever owned the house when the case was filed, not whoever owned it the day it sold.

When Does the House Actually Change Hands?

Later than most people assume. The final judgment sets a sale date somewhere between 20 and 35 days out, and the sale gets published for two weeks before it happens. After the auction, the clerk files a certificate of sale. If nobody objects within 10 days, the clerk files a certificate of title, and that’s the document that matters: “the sale shall stand confirmed, and title to the property shall pass to the purchaser.” Until that filing, the house is still on paper in the owner’s name.

Who Gets the Surplus, the Owner at Filing or the Owner at Sale?

The owner at filing. Florida law defines the owner of record as whoever appeared to own the property on the date the lis pendens was filed, and it creates a legal presumption that this person gets the surplus, after any subordinate lienholders who filed their own claims on time. The statute says outright that the legislature meant to override the old common law rule, the one that gave surplus money to whoever owned the house on the day it sold.

So moving out early doesn’t move anyone out of the money. I wrote a couple days back about why owning a house and living in it are two different things during foreclosure, and about the two Florida ZIP codes that led the country this quarter in owners who left before their case even finished. Same statute problem sits under both stories: the surplus is still tracked to whoever the case named at the start, wherever they ended up living.

Do I Need to Hire Someone to Claim It?

No, and Florida law says so in capital letters on its own claim form: “I (WE) UNDERSTAND THAT I (WE) AM (ARE) NOT REQUIRED TO HAVE A LAWYER OR ANY OTHER REPRESENTATION AND I (WE) DO NOT HAVE TO ASSIGN MY (OUR) RIGHTS TO ANYONE ELSE IN ORDER TO CLAIM ANY MONEY TO WHICH I (WE) MAY BE ENTITLED.” The same warning has to appear on the final judgment itself when the property is homesteaded. Claim the surplus before the clerk reports it unclaimed, with no subordinate lienholder ahead of you, and the court is required to order the clerk to pay it out after service charges. The clerk can even help with the paperwork.

There’s a whole industry of surplus recovery outfits that track down these filings and offer to collect the money for a cut of it. That’s exactly the arrangement the statute’s own capital-letter warning is telling people they don’t need.

How Long Do I Have to Claim It?

One year from the sale. After that, Florida presumes the surplus unclaimed and remits it to the state under the unclaimed property statutes. Past that point, only the owner of record the clerk actually reported, or that person’s beneficiary if they’ve died, can still claim it. Anything under $10 just goes to the clerk.

A lot of the people who show up in ATTOM’s vacant-foreclosure count left their house believing the case was already over. It usually wasn’t. The clerk was still writing to whoever the case named at filing, about money that might be sitting there waiting on them.

None of this tells you whether there’s a dollar left on your own case. That number sits with the clerk of court in whichever county filed it, not in a general answer here. What I can talk through is where you stand and what selling looks like from wherever that turns out to be.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to help if any of this sounds close to your own situation.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 My HOA Foreclose on Me If I’m Current on My Mortgage?

Yes. Your mortgage and your association dues are two separate debts, and paying one perfectly does nothing for the other.

I get this question from people who are genuinely confused, and the confusion is fair. They’ve never missed a mortgage payment. The bank is happy. Then a letter turns up about a few hundred dollars in dues, and a few months later there’s a lawsuit with their house named in it. The association never needed the bank’s permission. It has its own lien and its own way to enforce it, running on a track your lender isn’t even on.

I wrote about how an association forecloses on that lien and the ninety day window that can void it a couple weeks back. This one’s about what I left out then: the notice periods that have to run before any of it starts, and what happens to your protections the moment the mortgage goes bad too.

How Much Warning Do You Actually Get Before an HOA Can Sue?

More than most people assume, and the order matters as much as the count.

Before a homeowners association can add attorney fees to what you owe, it has to send a notice of late assessment and give you 30 days to pay without those fees attached. That’s Fla. Stat. 720.3085(3)(d).

Before it can record a lien at all, it has to send a Notice of Intent to Record a Claim of Lien, by certified mail and by regular first class mail, and give you 45 days. That’s 720.3085(4).

Before it can file the foreclosure suit itself, it has to send a Delinquent Assessment notice and wait another 45 days, and that second clock can’t start until the first 45 days already ran. That’s 720.3085(5). The two 45 day windows run back to back, not side by side. Miss both and a lawsuit still isn’t sitting on the table yet.

Is the Timing the Same for a Condo?

Close, but the back end splits in a way that changes how bad your morning is. I wrote through the condo version in full a few weeks back. Short version: a condo association can already have the suit filed while a homeowners association still can’t, because 718.116(6)(b) puts its 45 days in front of the judgment instead of in front of the filing. Same 45 days, different point on the line.

What Are the Two Brakes Almost Nobody Knows About?

Both are written into 720.3085, and both buy you time on top of the notices above.

The first is the Notice of Contest of Lien, which I’ve covered before. You record it, the association gets a copy, and from that point it has 90 days to sue or the lien is void.

The second I haven’t written about yet, and it’s the bigger one. At any point before a foreclosure judgment is entered, you can serve and file with the court a written offer to pay everything secured by the lien, plus whatever accrues while the offer sits open. That’s the qualifying offer under 720.3085(6). Filing it stays the foreclosure for up to 60 days from service, and while that stay runs the association can’t add its own legal fees on top, with a few narrow exceptions the statute lists. You get one of these per foreclosure action, and it’s a court filing with your name on it, not a phone call to the board.

What Happens to Both Brakes If You Fall Behind on the Mortgage Too?

They come off.

720.3085(5)(b) says the notice timing above doesn’t apply at all if the parcel is already in a foreclosure action or forced sale by someone else, or if you’re a debtor in bankruptcy. The qualifying offer in (6) is unavailable on the same facts, and it becomes voidable or void if a mortgage foreclosure, a tax certificate sale notice, or a bankruptcy shows up while it’s pending.

Being current with your lender is what keeps both of those doors open. Fall behind on the mortgage as well and the association’s clock speeds up at exactly the point you needed it slowest.

Does the Association’s Lien Ever Outrank My Mortgage?

Not usually, and it matters if it ever gets to a sale. As to a first mortgage already of record, the association’s lien is only effective from the date it records its own claim of lien. A mortgage recorded earlier stays senior. The statute does let an association buy the property at its own foreclosure sale and hold it, lease it, or sell it, but what it’s buying is title with your mortgage still sitting on top, untouched.

What Should You Actually Do With a Letter Like This?

Read the date on it first. Every window above is a statutory minimum that runs from a date, and the date on your letter is what starts your own clock. Then check whether your mortgage is current, because that’s what decides which of the brakes are still there for you.

None of this substitutes for reading your own declaration and the actual recording dates, which is a Florida real estate attorney’s job and not mine. What I can tell you is what selling looks like from wherever you land, and what each option does to the rest of your file.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through where you stand if a letter like this ever turns up in your mailbox.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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 Someone Just Take Over My Mortgage Payments?

Yes, but only on certain loans, and only if your lender signs off. FHA, VA and USDA loans are generally assumable, meaning a buyer can step into your exact rate and your remaining balance instead of taking out a brand new loan. Conventional loans almost never work this way.

The company that built a whole marketplace around this just walked away from it.

What Happened to the Company Built Around This?

Roam launched in 2023 as a marketplace matching buyers with sellers whose loans could be taken over, and it raised $11.5 million in its first funding round last year, led by Khosla Ventures. As of this August, Roam’s own website says it no longer handles home discovery or assumption processing. ResiClub, which covers housing data, reported on August 31 that it isn’t clear what the company does next, and that Roam hadn’t answered a request for comment.

Which Loans Can Actually Be Taken Over?

FHA, VA and USDA loans, generally. Conventional loans almost always carry a due-on-sale clause, which forces the balance to be paid off the moment the house changes hands.

Why Is This Pool of Cheap Loans Shrinking When Almost Nobody’s Selling?

Because the loans don’t need a sale to disappear. ResiClub calculated, off the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s own mortgage database, that 40.2 percent of the dollars still owed on FHA, VA and USDA loans carry a rate under 4 percent as of the first quarter of this year. Four years earlier, that figure was 75.6 percent.

That’s a share of the balance still owed, not a share of houses or a share of borrowers. It’s shrinking because home sales are near a four-decade low adjusted for population, so these loans mostly aren’t leaving through a closing table. They’re leaving through the mailbox, one payment at a time. A loan at 2.9 percent sends a bigger chunk of every payment toward principal than a loan at 6.5 percent does, so the cheap balances pay down faster than the expensive ones. The rate stays low. The amount of money carrying that rate keeps shrinking.

What Stops Most Buyers From Doing This?

Cash, usually. Say a house is worth $400,000 and the seller has a $250,000 balance at 2.99 percent. The buyer still has to come up with the $150,000 difference, either in cash or with a second loan stacked on top of the assumed one. Most first-time buyers can’t do that.

Does This Work If You Owe More Than the House Is Worth?

No, and this is the part that matters most if you’re behind. That $150,000 gap in the example above is a problem a seller with equity can solve. If you owe more than the house is worth, there’s no gap to bridge, because a buyer taking over your balance would be buying the shortfall along with the house. At that point you’re not looking at an assumption. You’re looking at a short sale, where the lender has to agree to let the house go for less than what’s owed.

What About VA Loans Here in Jacksonville?

Worth knowing if you’re near NAS Jacksonville, NS Mayport or Kings Bay, where VA loans are common. ResiClub’s reporting flags one specific issue: if a non-veteran assumes a VA loan, the seller’s VA entitlement generally stays tied to that loan until it’s paid off, which can limit the seller’s ability to use a VA loan on the next house, unless the buyer is an eligible veteran substituting their own entitlement in its place. That’s ResiClub’s read of the rule, and anyone facing that decision might want it confirmed in writing from the servicer and from VA before signing anything.

In other news, two of the five ZIP codes with the highest share of abandoned foreclosures in the country this quarter are in Florida, and the mistake sitting underneath that number has a plain answer in Florida law.

Do I Still Own My House During Foreclosure?

Yes. Moving out doesn’t end your ownership, and it doesn’t end the bills that come with owning the place either.

What Did ATTOM’s New Report Actually Find?

ATTOM released its Q3 2026 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report on August 28. Out of 104.6 million residential properties nationwide, 259,666 were in the foreclosure process. Of those, 8,482 sat vacant because the owner left before the case finished. That’s 3.3 percent, close to where it’s held for the last year.

Two of the five ZIP codes with the highest share of abandoned foreclosures anywhere in the country are in Florida: 33708 in St. Petersburg at 38.3 percent, and 34652 in New Port Richey at 32.6 percent. Both are in the Tampa Bay area. Nothing in Northeast Florida shows up in this release.

That 38.3 percent isn’t 38 percent of the houses in that ZIP code. It’s 38 percent of the houses already in foreclosure there, on a list that only ranked ZIP codes with at least 1,000 homes and at least 25 already in pre-foreclosure. On a base that small, a handful of houses moves the number a lot.

Why Doesn’t Moving Out End My Ownership?

Because Florida forecloses through the court system, and the case stays open and reversible until the sale actually happens. Under Florida law, a circuit court can rescind or set aside a foreclosure judgment any time before the sale, which restores the mortgage as if the case had never been filed. Whoever handed back the keys in month two is still the legal owner through all of it, right up until a sale actually closes the case.

What Keeps Running While the House Sits Empty?

The dues. Florida law makes a condo owner liable for every assessment that comes due while they own the unit, and it says that liability can’t be avoided by giving up use of the property or by walking away from it. The same duty applies to homeowners association dues on a house. I wrote about how that money gets applied a few weeks back: interest first, then the late fee, then costs and attorney fees, and only after all of that does anything go toward the actual assessment. That ordering is why a small balance on an empty house can outrun the person who left it.

What Does This Mean for One Specific Address?

That turns on the file, the county and what’s actually been filed, and it belongs with a Florida real estate attorney rather than a general answer.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through either one of these if it’s close to your own situation.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

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.