Fed Survey: One in Five Families Was Late on a Loan or Mortgage Payment Last Year, Near a Two-Decade High
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — Roughly 20% of U.S. families were late on a loan or mortgage payment within the past year, according to the Federal Reserve's 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances released Oct. 9, up from 12% in the 2022 survey and second only to the 21% recorded in 2007, on the eve of the global financial crisis. The triennial survey is the authoritative snapshot of household balance sheets.
Delinquency depth worsened as well: about 8% of families fell 60 or more days behind, matching the post-crisis peak of 2010, and 8.6% of families now spend over 40% of income on debt payments, up from 6.5%. Mitrade's summary noted the figures corroborate the buyer retreat visible in housing data — high rates are not only suppressing new purchases but eroding existing households' payment cushion.
For housing, the implication is demand-side fragility: when one in five families has a recent late payment, both underwriting pass rates and realistic buying budgets tighten further. The full SCF data tables, covering income, assets, debt and retirement accounts, are published on the Federal Reserve's website.
The SCF has been conducted by the Federal Reserve every three years since 1983, and the 2025 edition is among the most-cited household-side sources in mortgage underwriting debates. The full release, including median net worth and other components, is free on the Federal Reserve's website; this item extracts only the three indicators bearing directly on housing payment capacity, and the original report governs any fuller interpretation.
Source: Federal Reserve 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, released Oct. 9, as summarized by Mitrade.
Photo: Retirement Savings — aag_photos / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Openverse)
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图片来源：Federal Reserve / Wikimedia Commons（Public domain）
