Freddie Mac's apartment-loan delinquencies rise to 0.64% from 0.42% in February, while home loans hold at 0.60%

Freddie Mac's multifamily delinquency rate rose to 0.64% in August from 0.60% in July, the company said in its monthly volume summary released Thursday. The rate on single-family home loans edged up to 0.60% from 0.59%. The same day, Freddie's weekly survey put the 30-year mortgage rate at 7.03%, the highest since January 2025, as we reported earlier.

The trend is in apartments, not houses

One month's move is small. The six-month path is not. The multifamily rate was 0.42% in February and has risen every month since: 0.43% in March and April, 0.47% in May, 0.51% in June, 0.60% in July and 0.64% in August. That is 22 basis points in six months, a rise of about half, and most of it came in the last three months. A year ago it was 0.48%.

Single-family is flat by comparison. The rate has sat between 0.59% and 0.61% all year and was 0.56% a year earlier. The weaker corner is loans with primary mortgage insurance, usually borrowers who put down less than 20%: 1.25% in August against 1.10% a year ago.

Why "apartments now worse than houses" is the wrong read

On the headline numbers, multifamily (0.64%) has passed single-family (0.60%). That comparison does not hold up, because Freddie measures the two differently. The single-family rate counts loans three or more payments behind or in foreclosure, by number of loans. The multifamily rate counts loans two or more payments behind or in foreclosure, by unpaid balance. The multifamily test is stricter and is weighted by dollars, so one large building going delinquent moves it. The meaningful signal is the direction of each line over time, and only the multifamily line is climbing.

Freddie's own rate-risk gauge

A less-noticed table in the report shows how exposed Freddie itself is to rising rates. Its PVS-L measure, an estimate of the pre-tax change in the value of its assets and liabilities from a 50 basis point parallel move in rates, averaged $2.28 billion in August. A year earlier it was $408 million, and in December it was $989 million. Its duration gap, a measure of the mismatch between its assets and its funding, averaged 18 months, up from 3 months in August 2025. Freddie hedges with derivatives, and these are estimates, not losses. But the company is carrying noticeably more rate sensitivity than a year ago, just as the 10-year Treasury yield reached 5.18% on Thursday, according to the Treasury's daily yield curve.

Who it hits

The owner of an apartment building with a loan maturing in the next year or two is the one to think about. Those loans were often written when rates were far lower, and refinancing now means a higher payment on a property whose income has to cover it. The rising delinquency line suggests more owners are already failing that test. For home buyers, the report says the opposite: single-family credit is steady, and the problem in that market is the rate, not borrowers falling behind.

Refinancing has not come back either. Refinance loans were $6.1 billion in August, 19% of Freddie's single-family purchases. Total purchases and issuances were $38.3 billion, the lowest since February.

Related: commercial property sales in August.

Sources: Freddie Mac Monthly Volume Summary (August 2026, unaudited), Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, U.S. Treasury. This is market information, not investment advice.