A new mortgage report is giving us an early look at where the housing market may be headed next.

Today's real estate news comes from Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE, with a fresh look at what's happening inside the mortgage market.

I'm Kathy Fedke, and this is real estate news for investors.

This is Real Estate News with Kathy Fedke.

Let's start with refinancing.

Prepayment activity jumped in February.

That means more homeowners are paying off their loans early, often by refinancing.

Prepayment speeds rose 14% from January, and they're up 80% compared to last year.

This was driven by a drop in mortgage rates back in January. Those lower rates triggered a wave of refinance applications,

and now those loans are starting to close. Let's talk about delinquencies. They moved higher.

The national delinquency rate rose slightly to 3.72%.

That increase was driven by both early stage and serious delinquencies.

But here's the important context.

Even with that rise, delinquency levels are still below what they were before the pandemic, so we're not in

crisis territory. But the trend is worth watching. What is more concerning is what's happening

with serious delinquencies. Loans that are 90 days or more past due are rising, and not because

more people are falling behind, it's because fewer people are catching up. Cure rates have

dropped sharply, down more than 40% for seriously delinquent loans. That means once borrowers fall

behind, they're staying behind longer. At the same time, the total number of loans in serious

delinquency or foreclosure has climbed to about 878,000. That's up 25%

in just four months. A big part of that increase is coming from FHA loans. Now looking at foreclosures,

they're still low by historical standards, but they're also rising. Foreclosure starts were up 7% compared to last year,

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