Irma Triples Harvey's Threat to Mortgage Lenders
Jann Swanson
Mortgage News Daily
Sep 18 2017, 6:48AM
In the literal wake of a second major hurricane in as many weeks, Black Knight Financial Services is again warning of some potentially disastrous outcomes for mortgage guarantors. The company issued a report on September 11 estimating there was the potential of losses to mortgaged properties in Texas and Louisiana at $179 billion from Hurricane Harvey. Now they are back again with bad news about Hurricane Irma.
Irma hit the U.S. Virgin Islands, rather than hitting Miami as expected, and slammed into Florida's Cudjoe Key, making yet another landfall at Marco Island at category 3 windspeeds. Because of its late westerly shift and the hours it spent churning offshore of Florida's west coast the hurricane caused major storm surges on both coasts, affecting coastlines as far north as South Carolina and causing significant wind damage over the interior of both Florida and Georgia.
Black Knight's preliminary report on damages from Irma estimates the storm may have affected more than 3.1 million mortgaged properties, a number that represents $517 billion in unpaid principal balances. This is three times the number of properties as were involved with Hurricane Harvey and seven times those connected to Hurricane Katrina which clobbered Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005. In terms of dollars, Irma involved three times the projected unpaid balances of mortgages potentially impacted by Harvey
