FHA and VA Foreclosures Are Rising in 2026 — Here’s Why, and How to Find These Leads in Remine

The Briefing Room · Market & Lending

FHA and VA Foreclosures Are Rising in 2026 — Here’s Why, and How to Find These Leads in Remine

Updated July 27, 2026 · Data sourced from ATTOM Data Solutions, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and Mortgage Professional America

If you work with FHA or VA buyers — or you’re prospecting distressed inventory in Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach County — this is the trend you need to understand right now. Foreclosure filings are climbing fast, and government-backed loans are absorbing almost all of the pressure. Conventional loans, by comparison, are holding steady.

Here’s what’s actually happening, why it’s happening, and how you can use Remine to find these properties before they ever hit the MLS.

The Numbers

  • Foreclosure filings hit 227,548 properties nationwide in the first half of 2026 — a 21% jump year-over-year and 28% higher than the same period two years ago.
  • Foreclosure starts rose 18% in the first half of 2026, and completed repossessions jumped 33% from a year earlier — meaning properties are moving through the pipeline faster than before.
  • FHA delinquencies reached roughly 11.9% in early 2026 — the highest level since 2021, and about six times the delinquency rate on bank-held conventional mortgages.
  • VA loan delinquencies climbed to nearly 5% over the same period.
  • Florida is one of the top three states for foreclosure activity right now, alongside South Carolina and Indiana.

Why VA Loans Are Getting Hit Hardest

The VA side of this comes down to one policy change: Congress discontinued the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program, which used to let VA reduce a struggling borrower’s payment through a low-rate purchase of the loan. What replaced it is a partial claim program with narrow eligibility, and it can only be used once over the life of a loan.

The VA released a new loss-mitigation waterfall in June 2026, but it isn’t mandatory for servicers to adopt until November 28, 2026 — and even once it is, there’s still no built-in option to lower a borrower’s monthly payment.

The math is where this gets painful. A veteran who defaulted on a loan carrying a 4% rate is being modified into today’s market rate — close to 7.1% — nearly doubling the payment they already couldn’t afford. Donna Schmidt, president and CEO of DLS Servicing, who works across 59 different mortgage servicers, put it directly: “There is nothing for these borrowers.”

Why FHA Is Backlogged

FHA’s problem has a different root cause — it’s a five-year backlog finally working its way through the system. Pandemic-era workouts were so lenient that FHA’s normal, steady stream of foreclosures essentially paused for four to five years. When new loss mitigation rules took effect in October 2024, every defaulting FHA borrower was placed into a trial payment plan instead of being brought current outright.

Early results were rough — about 60% of borrowers failed their trial plans in the first wave, largely repeat re-defaulters who’d make one partial payment and cycle back through the system. That failure rate has eased to 40–50%, but a new problem is emerging: borrowers who did complete modifications are now starting to re-default, and FHA’s 24-month rule is leaving some of them with no further options.

Underneath all of this sits a structural risk factor: since 2022, roughly 29% of originated loans carried a front-end debt-to-income ratio of 50% or higher — leaving almost no room in the budget to absorb an unexpected expense, let alone a payment shock.

Is This 2008 Again?

No — and this is the correction worth making on repeat if you’re talking to clients. Overall foreclosure activity nationwide is still below pre-pandemic levels. This isn’t a broad market collapse. It’s a concentrated problem inside two specific loan types, driven by an expired COVID safety net and a canceled VA program — not by falling home values or a credit crisis.

That said, industry veterans in loss mitigation are telling clients to expect heavy foreclosure activity in the FHA space for the next two to three years, and the same in VA. For South Florida agents, that’s a multi-year window — not a one-time spike.

How to Find These Leads in Remine

If your MLS gives you Remine access, you can build a targeted list of FHA and VA properties showing early distress signals — often before they’re publicly listed. Here’s the workflow:

  1. Draw your target area. Search your farm area by city, zip code, or neighborhood and switch to the Properties view.
  2. Apply the Loan Type filter. Narrow results to FHA or VA-backed mortgages specifically.
  3. Layer in Mortgage Rate. For VA leads, isolate owners still sitting on a rate well below today’s market — those are the borrowers most exposed if they fall behind, since any modification resets them to current rates.
  4. Layer in Mortgage Age. Loans originated in 2022 or earlier are worth flagging first, given the elevated debt-to-income profile of that vintage.
  5. Turn on Distressed Deals. This overlay flags Lis Pendens, Notice of Default, Notice of Foreclosure, and Notice of Trustee filings — your earliest signal that a property is entering the pipeline.
  6. Save to a Cart and set alerts. Track the properties that match and get notified the moment their status changes, so you’re reaching out at the right time — not after the property’s already relisted by someone else.

Note: Filter availability depends on your account tier. Loan Type and Distressed Deals filters are typically available on Remine Pro — if you don’t see them, check your account level with your MLS or upgrade before building this workflow into your routine.

Reaching out to these homeowners is delicate work. Lead with empathy, not urgency — many of these owners don’t yet know what their options are, and a well-timed, well-informed conversation from you can be the difference between a forced foreclosure and a dignified sale.

Watch: Finding FHA & VA Leads in Remine

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