Mortgage Search Surge Hits 2008 Crisis Levels - Here’s Why Crypto Investors Should Care

Americans are Googling mortgage relief at rates not seen since the housing collapse—and traditional finance is showing its cracks again.

DeFi's moment? While homeowners scramble for conventional solutions, smart money's eyeing blockchain-based alternatives that bypass traditional lending bottlenecks.

The old guard stumbles. Banks tightening lending standards? Crypto-native lending protocols just hit record TVL—no credit checks, no waiting periods, just pure algorithmic efficiency.

Housing crisis playbook 2.0. Last time, Wall Street got bailed out while Main Street got foreclosed. This time? Decentralized finance offers actual ownership—not just another paper promise from the same institutions that failed everyone last round.

Even if the terms may be ambiguous, this time around, both “help with mortgage” and “help with payment” searches follow a similar trend, with spikes coinciding with the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid crisis. Regionally, searches are most common in the USA and the UK, with the UK leading in “help with mortgage” queries. 

While assets are bubbly, and BTC is just around 7% below its all-time peak, households are feeling the crunch in their cash flows, pressured by a higher cost of living. The mixed conditions also caused the recent uncertainty around the Fed’s interest rate decisions, as the concerns range between the threat of inflation and encouraging economic recovery. 

Coinciding with the mortgage searches, the term “bankruptcy lawyer” have spiked on Google to the highest level since 2004. The searches peaked in 2010 and 2019, but have spiked significantly in 2025. 

Underwater mortgages return for US buyers

The most recent data cited by the Wall Street Journal shows that parts of Texas and Florida are the most affected by underwater mortgages. 

Searches and general data have not translated into delinquencies. In fact, mortgages are still mostly paid on time, with delays even shrinking in the past quarter. 

Despite this, delinquencies may lag after the initial concerns for paying the mortgage on time. So far, delinquencies have not repeated the spike from 2020. The potential for delinquencies may depend on unemployment, expecting to see failures if the share of unemployed rises above 6%. 

Can crypto help with mortgages? 

For the US market, proposals have been made to include crypto as collateral for mortgages. So far, there are no examples of real usage, but the growth of digital assets can offset the mortgage cost, at least for personal finance.

In the summer of 2025, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in the USA issued a statement ordering the evaluation of crypto holdings when considering a home buyer’s risk. As crypto ownership expanded over the years, another housing crisis may show the ability of the new asset class to offset mortgage risks.

For UK buyers, lending against BTC as collateral has been used to complete home purchases. For now, the adoption of crypto is happening on a small scale. However, increasing costs may push owners to crypto adoption as a potential source of growth. 

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