Mortgage Statistics: 2024

The housing market has been sluggish over the past few years, hampered by steep mortgage rates and high home prices. Nonetheless, it remains an integral part of the economy.

Because of this, learning about what’s going on in the housing market can help shed light on the broader economy. For example, knowing that Americans collectively owe $12.52 trillion on their mortgages or that mortgage debt accounts for 70.5% of U.S. consumer debt provides insight into how and why Americans borrow money. In that same vein, seeing how only 0.57% of borrowers are seriously delinquent When a borrower’s monthly payments are late by 90 days or more, they’re considered seriously delinquent. on their mortgages despite economic headwinds can assuage concerns about a potential collapse.

With all that in mind, LendingTree analyzed various data sources to create an overview of mortgage and housing market statistics. Read on to learn more about how much mortgage debt Americans have, how they manage and use that debt, and how the broader market appears to be fairing in the face of falling mortgage rates and an uncertain economic future.

Key mortgage statistics in 2024

• Americans owe $12.52 trillion on 85.35 million mortgages. That comes to an average of $146,690 per person with a mortgage on their credit report. Mortgages represent 70.5% of U.S. consumer debt.
• Additionally, Americans owe $380 billion on 13.1 million home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). That equates to an average of $29,052 per account. Outstanding HELOC debt represents 2.1% of U.S. consumer debt.
• The average interest rate for a 30-year, fixed mortgage in 2024 is 6.79%. Rates (through the week ending Sept. 12) ranged from a low of 6.20% the week ending Sept. 12 to a high of 7.22% the week ending May 2.
• Americans originated $780 billion in new mortgage debt in the first two quarters of 2024. 80.5% of that was issued to super-prime borrowers with credit scores of at least 720, while 3.5% was issued to subprime borrowers with scores below 620.
• 3.35% of mortgages were delinquent by at least 30 days as of the second quarter of 2024, up from 2.56% as of the second quarter of 2023. 0.57% of mortgages were seriously delinquent (late by 90 days or more) as of the second quarter of 2024, up from 0.46% as of the same period in 2023. While delinquencies have grown, they’re still lower than at any point from the start of 2003 to the end of 2019, just before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In the first half of 2024, there were 91,360 consumers in the U.S. with a new foreclosure on their credit report. While this figure is up from 74,500 in the first half of 2023, it’s much lower than the 885,240 consumers with new foreclosures in the first half of 2008 when the housing market crashed in the wake of the Great Recession.
• In the second quarter of 2024, only 1.7% of mortgages were “underwater.” This figure is down from the first quarter of 2024 and far below a record high of 26% in 2009.
• Through the second quarter of 2024, American households held nearly $35.1 trillion, or 72.8% of the total value of residential real estate assets in the U.S., in real estate equity. That’s up 1.4 percentage points from the second quarter of 2023, when American homeowners held $32.0 trillion in equity.

Outstanding mortgages

Spurred by a housing market frenzy born in the wake of record-low mortgage rates during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, outstanding mortgage debt has grown by nearly $3 trillion since the end of 2019.

The massive increase can largely be attributed to two things: more people with active mortgages and mortgages that are (generally) larger.

Though mortgage rates have since climbed higher, many buyers were able to lock in record-low rates during the height of the pandemic. This allowed them to increase their purchase prices — or take advantage of cash-out refinances — while maintaining similar monthly payments to what they might’ve had before 2020.

Outstanding mortgages

Source: LendingTree analysis of Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. Notes: *People with joint accounts are counted twice if a mortgage account appears on their credit report. 2024 data is through the second quarter.

Outstanding HELOCs

Source: LendingTree analysis of Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. Notes: *People with joint accounts are counted twice if a HELOC account appears on their credit report. 2024 data is through the second quarter.

Mortgage rates

Over the past 50 years, rates dropped below 5.00% for the first time in 2009 after the Federal Reserve aggressively lowered target rates to combat the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. Rates dipped below 4.00% for the first time in late 2011 and below 3.00% for the first time in 2020.

Average mortgage rates in the U.S. reached their lowest level in history (2.65%) during the first week of 2021. But they quickly rebounded, climbing to their highest point in over two decades (7.08%) by October 2022. While they ebbed and flowed from 2022 to now, climbing to as high as 7.79% in 2023, they’ve yet to fall back below 6.00%.

Here’s a look at historic mortgage rates dating to 1972:

Historic interest rates for 30-year conventional mortgages

Source: LendingTree analysis of Federal Reserve of St. Louis data. Note: 2024 data is as of the week ending Sept. 12.

Mortgage originations

Mortgage originations dropped off dramatically as rates rose from their 2021 historic lows to their highest point in nearly 20 years. In fact, mortgage originations totaled $2.75 trillion in 2022, compared with $4.51 trillion in 2021. Originations continued to drop in 2023 to $1.50 trillion. Through the first half of 2024, their pace rebounded slightly, with $777 billion worth of originations, compared with $717 billion in the first half of 2023.

At $4.51 trillion, 2021 saw the largest annual origination volume in any year for which we have data. Historically low rates that year meant that borrowers could take out bigger loans for similar monthly payments, and it also drew many people to refinance their existing mortgages.

Origination volume was also elevated in the years leading up to the housing market crash and Great Recession of the late 2000s, with subprime borrowers with credit scores below 620 taking up an unusually large share of the new debt. Subprime borrowing as a share of origination volume peaked in 2006 at 13.6%, while super-prime borrowers with scores of at least 720 held their smallest share that year (53.5%). In the first half of 2024, subprime borrowers comprised 3.5% of all people who originated a mortgage. Super-prime borrowers, on the other hand, made up 80.5% of those who got a mortgage.

Average sales price

The average purchase price for a home in the U.S. is $501,700 as of the second quarter of 2024.

Driven largely by lower mortgage rates, home prices rose dramatically after the start of the pandemic. Despite initially dipping from an average of $383,000 in the first quarter of 2020 to $374,500 in the second quarter, prices climbed to a record high of $552,600 in the fourth quarter of 2022 — an increase of $169,600, or 44.3%, from the first quarter of 2020.

Prices have since come down nationally but remain elevated and at near-record highs in some areas.

Delinquencies and foreclosures

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as of the second quarter of 2024, 3.35% of mortgage debt was delinquent by 30 days or more, while 0.57% was seriously delinquent by 90 days or more. While that’s up from the same period last year, the percentage of mortgage debt that’s delinquent remains on par with what it was before the pandemic, and the share that’s seriously delinquent remains near record lows.

Like serious delinquencies, foreclosures also remain rare, though they’re more common than during the height of the pandemic, when they were at historic lows. Through the first half of 2024, 91,360 individuals had a new foreclosure appear on their credit reports. If this trend continues, 2024 will likely end with more new foreclosures than any year since 2020. That said, context is key, and foreclosures in the first half of 2024 are lower than in the first half of any year starting in 2019 and going back to 2003 (the earliest year for which LendingTree has data).

As discussed, 2021 saw a huge surge in the total volume of dollars originated as mortgage debt, and a historically high proportion of that went to super-prime borrowers who were able to lock in at or near record-low mortgage rates. For this reason, the numbers of delinquencies and foreclosures haven’t dramatically increased relative to before the pandemic. And they’re unlikely to do so, even in the face of economic headwinds like persistent inflation and a weakening labor market.

Number of new foreclosures

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax panel. Note: 2024 data is through the second quarter.

Sources

• Federal Reserve
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax panel
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• CoreLogic