Real Estate Market Status and Useful Links
Posted by drylightning on June 20, 2009
RealtyTrac® May 2009 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™
“May 2009 foreclosure activity was the third highest month on record, and marked the third straight month where the total number of properties with foreclosure filings exceeded 300,000 — a first in the history of our report,”
The report shows foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 321,480 U.S. properties during the month, a decrease of 6 percent from the previous month but an increase of nearly 18 percent from May 2008.
“We expect REO activity to spike in the coming months as foreclosure delays and moratoria implemented by various state laws come to an end.”
Now About All Those Option ARM Mortgages
(courtesy of www.dailyreckoning.com )
You remember the good old Option ARM don’t you? That’s the loan that allows you to choose the size of the payment you make on your monthly mortgage. Typically the loan begins with a twelve month introductory rate. After that, you can choose the minimum payment option.
If you choose the minimum payment option, you actually pay less each month that the interest on your loan. That interest is deferred, but it’s added to your principal. That means your principal is growing all the time. This is why these loans were also referred to as negative amortisation (or neg am) loans. You weren’t paying it off. You were actually growing it.
We hope you’ll bear with us for a moment as we go through this. The reason? There’s a slight sense of relief in markets right now. Everyone is throwing stones at AIG. And with the market putting a few good up days, people are losing the sense that our financial system faces serious problems. But they are trillions of dollars serious. And no amount of pleading by the U.S. Treasury Secretary for bankers to lend will change that. More losses are head.
But what size will the losses be? Another trillion? Another two trillion? Well let’s exclude commercial property and loans securitised with credit card receivables or auto loans. Let’s just look at Option ARMs.
Remember, an Option ARM loan “recasts” after five years to a new principal. The interest rate might even stay the same. But if the loan has been negatively amortising (growing as deferred interest payment are added to the principal), then the size of the loan is going to be much larger (an average of 30%, by some estimates).
Even if you’re paying the same interest rate, households at the margin are going to have a much harder time making minimum payments on loans that are 30% larger. And we’re not talking a small amount here. The Washington Post reports that between 2004 and 2007, over US$750 billion in Option ARM loans were originated. The scary part is that, as of late December last year, 28% of those loans were either delinquent or already in foreclosure.
And that’s before the “recasts” have even hit the borrowers. Most “recasts” don’t happen until five years down the track. That means mortgage holders wouldn’t confront the prospect of a higher monthly payment until 2011 or 2012. The chart below from Credit Suisse shows the pig in the python problem.
Bernanke has solved the interest rate problem for home buyers with adjustable rate mortgages by slashing short-term rates to zero, effectively. What’s more, he’s conducted purchases of mortgage backed securities by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in an attempt to bring down mortgage rates directly.
The looming trouble, however, is that negative amortisation ads to principal. It does so at a time when home prices continue to fall and unemployment is rising. Making a much higher payment is pretty shocking to begin with. It’s near impossible when you’re out of a job.
The trouble will hit sooner than the Credit Suisse chart suggests. Option ARMs automatically recast at the higher principal level once a predetermined loan to value ratio (LTV) is reached. For example, say you take out an Option ARM at an 80% (LTV) and immediately begin making the minimum payment. Your loan automatically recasts at an 85% LTV ratio. In other words, your loan recasts sooner than the five years you expected because of negative amortisation.
This is why the Credit Suisse chart shows a swelling amount of recasts beginning in April of 2009 and peaking in December of this year. It turns out many of those who took out Option ARMs chose the minimum payment. This led to much faster growth in the loan principal, thanks to neg am. And now, it’s going to lead to a much sooner recast of the loan.
As you may know, the current mortgage relief plans in the States, as feeble as they are, do not allow you to refinance your home if you already have negative equity. This means that in the coming months-starting next month-you have millions of home owners who will face much higher monthly payments on their mortgage.
Do you think they’ll pay them? Can they afford to? What will happen to house prices as this wave of neg am Option ARMs goes into default and foreclosure? There could be some real bargains in the housing market.
But for the banks, there will be some real pain. The banks, the insurance companies, the usual suspects, these are the institutions that stand the most to lose from losses on that $750 billion wave of Option ARM recasts. We’re not saying all those loans will go into default. But at the very least, the losses are certain to be taken, even though no one knows how big they will be.
Now maybe all this is “priced in” to bank shares and financial stocks. It’s pretty hard to price in what you don’t know, though. What seems certain is that banks would want to hoard capital in the coming months, not lend it. They face hundreds of billions more in losses, and that’s just from residential real estate (not commercial real estate or corporate bonds).
How will credit recover under those conditions? We reckon it won’t. In fact, the second contraction of the credit crisis could be worse than the first. You should consider that as you ponder your decision to get in our out of the stock market. Think of the number of companies that are already locked out of access to capital and credit. Will that improve in the coming months?
There’s a very real chance it could get much worse. Of course we hope that’s not true. But if it is, it means all those clowns holding press conferences about bailouts and recoveries are just whistling past the grave yard.
Excellent Real Estate Statistics for Sacramento Area
http://sacrealstats.blogspot.com/2009/06/sacramento-regional-real-estate-trends_14.html
Useful Real Estate Links
