The story everyone tells about Florida pre-foreclosures is that somebody took on a loan they could not afford. The property records do not support it. Across 1,436 first-position mortgages recorded against Florida homes now in pre-foreclosure, nearly a third carry an interest rate below 4 percent — cheaper than anything a buyer can get today, and cheaper than most of the mortgages held by owners who are perfectly current.
These are not exotic loans that reset. They are ordinary thirty-year mortgages written at the going rate, many of them at the best rates in modern history. Something else is taking these houses, and a lis pendens is the first public sign of it.
A third of these loans are cheaper than anything on the market
The sample is every single-family home and condominium tied to a pre-foreclosure filing in Collier, Lee, Sarasota and Pinellas counties since May 2026, limited to the first-position mortgage on each property. Of 1,857 properties, 1,499 — about 81 percent — have a mortgage on record at all. After removing a single securitized blanket loan whose balance was pledged against an entire portfolio rather than one house, 1,436 had a recorded interest rate.
472 of those 1,436 loans, or 32.9 percent, are under 4 percent.
Sorting them by the year the loan was written shows where they come from.
| Loan written | Loans | Median rate | Under 4% | Median amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 or earlier | 236 | 5.95% | 15.7% | $146,600 |
| 2015–2019 | 204 | 3.95% | 54.4% | $184,303 |
| 2020–2021 | 265 | 2.90% | 99.6% | $251,363 |
| 2022 | 166 | 5.10% | 31.9% | $301,246 |
| 2023 | 224 | 6.60% | 1.8% | $323,062 |
| 2024 or later | 341 | 6.76% | 0.9% | $337,500 |
The 2020–2021 cohort is the whole story
One row carries the argument. The 265 loans written in 2020 and 2021 have a median rate of 2.90 percent, and 99.6 percent of them are under 4 percent. Those owners borrowed at the cheapest moment in the history of American mortgage lending, and they are now in pre-foreclosure anyway.
They are also the second-largest vintage in the sample, at 18.5 percent of it — behind only the loans written in 2024 or later, which are recent enough that an early default says more about the underwriting than the economy. Strip those newest loans out and the 2020–2021 group is the largest single block of mortgages behind Florida pre-foreclosures today.
These were not bad loans
The obvious objection is that the rates must be unusual in some way. They are not. Set the cohort against Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, the standard national benchmark for the 30-year fixed rate, and the two track each other closely.
| Loan written | Median rate in this cohort | Freddie Mac 30-year average |
|---|---|---|
| 2015–2019 | 3.95% | 3.85%–4.54% |
| 2020–2021 | 2.90% | 3.11% / 2.96% |
| 2022 | 5.10% | 5.34% |
| 2023 | 6.60% | 6.81% |
| 2024 or later | 6.76% | 6.72% / 6.60% / 6.43% |
Every vintage sits at or slightly below the national average for its year. Whatever is pushing these households toward foreclosure, it did not arrive in the form of an expensive mortgage.
What it costs to keep a Florida house, apart from the mortgage
The mortgage is only one line in the cost of holding a Florida home, and over the life of these loans it is the line that stayed still. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation publishes the average premium actually charged in each county, calculated as total premium in force divided by policies in force. As of September 30, 2025:
| County | Average homeowners premium, with wind | Average condo unit owners premium, with wind |
|---|---|---|
| Collier County | $5,565 | $2,269 |
| Pinellas County | $4,044 | $1,381 |
| Lee County | $3,646 | $1,493 |
| Sarasota County | $3,482 | $1,753 |
Put the two numbers beside each other. The median 2020–2021 loan in this cohort is $251,363. At 2.90 percent, that carries roughly $7,289 of interest in its first year. The average homeowners premium in Collier County is $5,565 — about three-quarters of the annual interest on the mortgage itself, for a single line item that was never part of the monthly payment the buyer was underwritten against. Property taxes, which can also move sharply and which have their own enforcement path ending in a sale over unpaid property taxes, sit on top of that.
One caution against the easy version of this story: premiums are not currently spiking. Florida's insurance market has been easing, with the regulator reporting average rate requests below zero during 2026 and average premiums falling in most counties. The pressure in this data is the level of the carrying cost measured against an unusually cheap loan, not a fresh increase.
What this data does not say
It does not say why any particular household stopped paying. We can measure what the loan costs and what the insurance costs; we cannot read intent out of a property record, and no figure above should be taken as a cause. Divorce, illness, job loss, a death in the family and a dozen other things end up in the same filing.
It also does not support the explanation most people reach for first. Condominiums, with their special assessments and reserve requirements, are not over-represented among the cheap loans: condos are 17.6 percent of the sub-4 percent group and 15.4 percent of the rest. That gap is too small to carry a narrative, and we went looking for it specifically.
Finally, the figures describe the roughly 81 percent of these properties that have a first mortgage on record. A property with no mortgage on record cannot show a rate, and it is not counted here. The pattern it leaves is consistent with an earlier finding that the Florida pre-foreclosure property is, on the assessment roll, an ordinary house rather than a distressed outlier.
Why a cheap mortgage changes the conversation
For anyone who buys, lists or finances distressed property in Florida, the sub-4 percent share is not trivia. It changes what the owner is actually holding.
An owner with a 2.90 percent mortgage has something genuinely valuable and completely illiquid. They cannot take that rate with them, and replacing it at today's rates costs them roughly double in interest on the same balance. That cuts both ways, and both ways matter. It makes the owner far more reluctant to sell than their situation would suggest, because moving means giving up the cheapest money they will ever borrow. It also means the equity underneath them is often real, because a loan written in 2020 or 2021 has had five years of amortization and a run of Florida price appreciation behind it. An approach built on the assumption that a defaulting owner is desperate and underwater will misread most of this group, and fix-and-flip investors and wholesalers who lead with a lowball number tend to get one conversation and no second call.
The practical consequence is timing. A filing is the start of a long process with several exits, and where a pre-foreclosure can go next depends almost entirely on how early someone reaches the owner. The owners in this cohort are not people who gambled on a bad loan. They are people holding an asset they would rather keep, which is a very different conversation to walk into.
PocketLeads tracks Florida pre-foreclosure leads alongside probates, divorces and evictions from county courts in Collier, Lee, Sarasota and Pinellas, with more counties coming — filings on the platform the same day, matched to the property, its owners and its equity position. Start a free trial and see what the filings in your county actually look like.
Frequently asked questions
How many Florida pre-foreclosures have a mortgage under 4 percent?
In this cohort, 472 of 1,436 first-position mortgages — 32.9 percent — carry a rate below 4 percent. The concentration sits in loans written during 2020 and 2021, where 99.6 percent are under 4 percent and the median is 2.90 percent.
Does a low mortgage rate mean the owner has equity?
Often, but it is not guaranteed and it should be checked case by case. A loan written in 2020 or 2021 has had several years of amortization behind it, and Florida prices rose substantially over that period. Neither fact establishes equity on any individual property, which depends on the original loan amount, any junior liens, and the current value.
If the mortgage is cheap, why is the owner in default?
This data cannot answer that, and we are not going to guess. It shows what the loan costs and what insurance costs in these counties. Everything else — illness, divorce, job loss, a death in the family — is invisible in a property record.
Is Florida homeowners insurance still rising?
Not at present. The state regulator has reported average rate requests below zero during 2026 and average premiums falling in most of Florida's 67 counties. The figures in this post describe the level of the premium, which remains high, rather than a current increase.
Do these rates come from the actual recorded mortgages?
Yes. They are the rates on first-position mortgages recorded against these properties, not an estimate or a model. As a check on the sample, the median rate for each year tracks Freddie Mac's national 30-year average for that same year closely, which is what you would expect from ordinary market-rate lending.
Why only first-position mortgages?
Junior liens behave differently and would distort the picture. Second, third and fourth-position loans in this sample have median balances between roughly $20,000 and $31,000 and are heavily weighted toward recent years, so including them would make the overall cohort look both cheaper and more recent than the mortgages actually securing these homes.