Florida Households Owe Texas-Sized Debts
Florida never loses its appeal, no matter how many consecutive summers the Sunshine State finds itself in the path of a hurricane, and no matter how many iguanas and alligators walk across your yard, or even right up to your doorstep. Florida has seen a steady growth in its population. People come to Florida for its year-round sunshine and for economic prosperity, but at the most, they get one of those. Nothing in Florida is as affordable as you remember it. The cost of property insurance is prohibitive, so housing is becoming less affordable, whether you buy or rent your accommodations. Besides housing, everything else is expensive, too, from car payments to groceries. In fact, Floridians in major cities tend to carry a higher balance of consumer debts than people in cities with an outsized reputation for being expensive, such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. If you love the Florida sunshine but are sick of being in debt, contact a Miami debt lawyer.
The Cities With the Biggest NoniMortgage Debt Burdens in the Country
The Lending Tree website has just published its annual list of the metropolitan areas with the highest average balance of consumer debt per household. The debts considered do not include mortgage debt, and the results do not indicate whether there is a difference between the average debt carried by renters and the average non-mortgage debt carried by homeowners. Four of the top 15 cities are in Florida. Miami is in fourth place, with the average household’s non-mortgage debt at $44,230. The other Florida metro areas that made the list are Orlando at number seven, Tampa at number ten, and Jacksonville at number 11.
The only cities that have more non-mortgage debt per household than Miami are all in Texas. Austin ranks first, San Antonio ranks second, and Houston ranks third.
Why Is Miami So Burdened by Debt?
In Miami, as in most of the other debt-burdened cities, auto loans account for the largest portion of non-mortgage debt. The average household in Miami has more than $15,000 in auto loan debt, which means that auto loans account for more than a third of the household’s non-mortgage debt. Car prices have stayed high, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. To meet the demand for financing of cars with hefty price tags, auto loans with longer repayment terms have become more common. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was virtually unheard of for the term of a car loan to exceed five years. Today, seven-year car loans are a standard option; hardly anyone can afford to pay off a car loan faster than this. This means that interest charges pile up over seven years, meaning that your monthly payments are lower, but you pay more money over time.
Work With a Debt Lawyer About Avoiding Mortgage Foreclosure
A South Florida debt lawyer can help you if you are as deeply in debt as everyone else in South Florida. Contact Nowack & Olson, PLLC in Miami, Florida to discuss your case.
Source:
news4jax.com/news/local/2024/11/14/these-florida-cities-among-most-debt-ridden-in-the-us-heres-why/
