Florida tops in late home loans

Florida has more federally backed home loans that have gone unpaid for a year or longer than the total number of late loans in every state except California.   A report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency found that about 166,000 Florida mortgages backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac were in arrears on payments for a year or more.

Fannie Mae has about 1.2 million loans in Florida, while Freddie Mac has about 750,000.

During 2010 and 2011, nearly 165,000 federally backed loans statewide were modified to make monthly payments easier for the homeowner, according to the agency report. That was in addition to 56,558 short sales that were offered during the same period.