Housing market update

<!--Tags: -->At least one US government official has spoken out regarding mortgage practices in no uncertain terms; unfortunately he probably had little leverage over lenders generally and still doesn't:

‘Sound underwriting and, for that matter, simple common sense suggests that a mortgage lender would almost always want to verify the income of a riskier subprime borrower,' Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan said in a speech. ‘But the norm appears to be just the opposite,' said Dugan, whose agency regulates nationally chartered banks. ‘Nearly 50 percent of all subprime loans last year accepted stated income,' meaning the underwriters did not verify the information provided by borrowers on loan applications.' Dugan cited a Mortgage Asset Research Institute study that found 90 percent of borrowers reported incomes higher than those found on file with the Internal Revenue Service and almost 60 percent of the stated incomes were exaggerated by more than 50 percent. Another survey of more than 2,100 mortgage brokers, reported by Inside Mortgage Finance, found that 43 percent of mortgage brokers who use low-documentation loan products know their borrowers cannot qualify under standard debt-to-income ratios.'

However, the loose practices seem to be disappearing due to the fact that no one wants mortgage-backed securities anymore without solid investigation of borrowers being done:

"David Lowman, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s global mortgage business, said, ‘35 percent of what once could be done, can no longer be done,' referring to mortgage loan products that have effectively been taken off the shelves...Duane LeGate, president of House Buyer Network, a specialist in short sales and foreclosure prevention, said one of the real estate agents he works with had six deals blow up within four days because, ‘The loan originator told him, ‘We're not offering [these products] anymore.' According to LeGate, this kind of thing just started to happen in the past month or so. ‘Anything that smacks of no-income and no-documentation is history,' said Allen Hardester, director of business development for mortgage broker Guaranteed Rate. ‘Anything above 85 percent to 90 percent loan-to-value, anything non-owner occupied, anything ludicrous as to value, like someone stepping up from a $1,000 a month payment to a $6,000 a month, is history.'"

Tidbits from the Housing Bubble blog:

The Journal Sentinel from Wisconsin..."‘Two years ago, buyers were willing to buy without making their own home sale a contingency. Now there's fear it won't get sold and the buyer will be stuck with two mortgages,' Stefaniak said. ‘We're doing contingencies these days even on the market's lower end. And on a lot of the upper end, the seller has offers, but some unrealistic buyers won't come down on their own house's price"...that last bit is bizarre; if you can't get your existing house to sell, forget about moving up...