Mortgage loan performance largely held up in April, even as household budgets had to contend with growing inflationary impacts of global energy and trade shocks linked to the Iran war.
Despite rising by 13 basis points year over year, the national delinquency rate was unchanged on a monthly basis at 3.35% in April, according to ICE Mortgage Technology’s preliminary report on April mortgage performance.
“Mortgage performance remained broadly stable from March to April, with the overall share of past-due loans unchanged and below pre-pandemic levels,” stated Andy Walden, who leads mortgage and housing market research at ICE.
Government data shows surging grocery prices in April joined elevated gasoline and fuel costs as the Strait of Hormuz remained largely closed during the second full month of the ongoing conflict.
But early-stage delinquencies remained below last year’s levels in April, “suggesting that most homeowners continue to stay on track,” Walden commented in the report.
The average mortgage holder had roughly $207,000 in tappable home equity at the end of March, ICE reported last month — a 2% annual decline that increased the mortgage market’s combined loan-to-value ratio to 45.9% in the first quarter from 44.7% a year ago.
A steady rise in foreclosure starts that began last year and gained momentum through the first quarter of 2026 declined from March to April by more than 5%. Nevertheless, foreclosure starts were about 26% higher than a year ago in April at 37,000.
Normalization in foreclosure trends saw foreclosure inventory exceed pre-pandemic norms for the second consecutive month, with about 3,000 more loans slipping into active foreclosure in April. That pushed total volumes to 276,000, up 32% from year-ago levels.
Walden flagged concentrated weakness among borrowers slipping into later stages of delinquency, with the slight annual rise in the total delinquency rate driven by an increase in seriously delinquent loans that were 90 days or more past due but not in foreclosure.
About 11,000 fewer properties were backed by seriously delinquent mortgages in April than the month before, but the 577,000 homes that fell into that bucket in April was 101,000 higher than the same month a year ago.
The monthly stabilization was supported by seriously delinquent cure rates that notched a second month of improvement. More than 62,000 borrowers cured seriously delinquent loans in March and April, ICE noted. Cure rates reflect the share of loans returned to current status.
While the rebound in March and April exceeds the average of 42,000 monthly cures over the period from November to October, the pace remains 20% below last year’s levels.
Reflecting the overall portion of borrowers facing some degree of payment stress, the number of properties with mortgages that were 30 days or more past due or in foreclosure increased to 2.12 million in April, up about 7,000 from March and 163,000 from a year ago.
