March 3, 2026, Berkeley, CA — The nonpartisan California Policy Lab (CPL) today updated the California Credit Dashboard with data through December 2025, revealing a split financial picture across the state. Mortgage lending is rebounding — driven by large home loans in the Bay Area — even as many other borrowers fall behind on student loans and mortgages.
“These credit trends reflect a tale of two Californias,” explains Evan White, Executive Director of the California Policy Lab’s UC Berkeley site. “Wealth and prosperity, especially in the Bay Area, are driving a large increase in average mortgage amounts, to a record-high $699,000. Meanwhile, financial strain is also on the rise, with more households falling behind on their student loans and mortgages.”
Key trends in Q4 2025
New mortgage lending picks up as loan amounts grow
- Lenders issued $91 billion in new mortgages in Q4, a 28% increase from a year earlier.
- The average new mortgage loan reached $699,000 — up 10% from two years ago and up 23% from ten years ago, after adjusting for inflation.
- The Bay Area is driving much of this growth, perhaps due to new AI-related wealth. Mortgage lending there has ticked up 47% over the past year, compared to a 12% rise in the LA area, and the average new mortgage is now $894,000.
More borrowers are falling behind on student loans and mortgages:
- 6.8% of student loan borrowers were behind on payments in Q4 — up from the previous quarter, though still below the 11% peak earlier in 2025.
- 1.4% of mortgage borrowers were behind on payments, continuing a gradual upward trend, but still below pre-pandemic levels.
Foreclosures tick up in some regions, but remain low overall:
- In the Northern Sacramento Valley, the foreclosure rate rose to 0.4% — the highest level since the Great Recession.
- Across California’s five largest regions, foreclosure rates have edged up since 2021 but remain low at around 0.1%.
Snapshot of recent trends
The Dashboard’s California Financial Trends snapshot highlights how credit conditions have changed compared to the previous quarter, one year ago, five years ago, and ten years ago.
Three notable quarter-over-quarter changes in the latest data:
- Average credit card balances rose 2.2%, from $5,540 to $5,670.
- Average new auto loans increased 5.2%, from $31,800 to $33,500.
- Average new mortgage loans rose 6.7%, from $655,000 to $699,000.
About CPL’s California Credit Dashboard
The interactive California Credit Dashboard provides 10 charts that track outcomes from 2004 to present across six types of debt — auto, credit card, home equity, mortgage, student, and other — as well as collections.
Users can filter results by:
- Seven age groups
- Nine economic regions
- Five credit score categories
The Dashboard also includes four county-level maps that allow users to compare:
- Delinquency rates
- New loan amounts
- Monthly payments
More about the California Credit Dashboard
The Dashboard uses credit-bureau data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel. All figures in the Dashboard are based on a 2% random sample of individuals. Where applicable, the results are multiplied by 50 to obtain the full-population estimate. A technical appendix provides detailed information about the data and underlying research. Several dozen faculty and graduate students from the University of California currently use this dataset for research.
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