The 25 U.S. Counties With the Worst Mortgage Delinquency Rates in 2026

Clayton County and Newton County, Georgia, and Livingston Parish, Louisiana are tied at the top — 2.9% of mortgages 90 or more days delinquent, roughly quadruple the national rate of 0.8%. The fastest-moving counties tell a different story: Newton County, GA and Kanawha County, WV each more than tripled their delinquency rate in a single year. Sourced directly from the CFPB National Mortgage Database, county level, current through September 2025 (the most recent month published as of July 2026).

Highest current delinquency rate

Fastest-rising delinquency, year over year

These counties may not have the highest absolute rate, but posted the largest single-year increase — the early-warning list, not the current-worst list.

Falling behind on a mortgage payment doesn't move as fast as credit card or personal-loan default — but once a servicer starts foreclosure, deadlines get firm quickly. If a debt collector or servicer is already contacting you, see what to do the first time a collector contacts you and how a debt validation request works before anything moves to court.

Methodology

Source: CFPB National Mortgage Database, "Mortgages 90 or more days delinquent," county level, monthly, most recent published month September 2025. Figures are unmodified CFPB numbers — current month and the same month one year prior, with no extrapolation applied.

Why no county-level projection: our state-level outlook extrapolates a trend line from 24 months of state data. A single county's monthly series is thinner and noisier — a small number of loans can swing the percentage sharply — so a same-length regression at the county level would produce a less reliable slope than the state aggregate. We show only real, published current-vs-year-ago figures here for that reason.