New Jersey Real Estate Report

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Biggest Housing Losers
May 12, 2008

You may not know it, dear reader, but Congress is playing you for a sap. During the housing mania, you didn’t lend money at teaser rates to borrowers who couldn’t pay, or buy a bigger house than you could afford. You paid your bills on time. As a reward for that good judgment and restraint, Barney Frank is now going to let you bail out the least responsible bankers and borrowers.

The Massachusetts Democrat’s housing bill passed the House Thursday, and it makes us wish we had splurged like so many others. In the name of helping strapped home buyers, Mr. Frank is giving lenders a chance to pass their worst paper onto Uncle Sugar. If both borrower and lender agree to participate, lenders can accept 85% of the current appraised mortgage value and in return get to dump up to $300 billion of those loans on the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Guess which loans they are likely to dump?

Looking at the details in Mr. Frank’s 45-page first draft of this bill, FIS Applied Analytics estimated that taxpayer losses could reach as high as $27 billion, more than four times Mr. Frank’s estimate. The next draft, clocking in at 72 pages when it passed Mr. Frank’s committee, was miraculously scored by the Congressional Budget Office at “only” a $2.7 billion cost to taxpayers.

CBO lowballed it in part because it assumed that most people eligible for this assistance will not apply for it. It is true that some lenders may be wary of taking a 15% haircut off the top, but watch out if bankers and borrowers do take the taxpayers up on Mr. Frank’s offer. This is especially likely because at the same time that Mr. Frank touts the lowball estimate, he is also making mortgage servicers an offer they can’t refuse.
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The plan seems to get more generous by the week, at least if you’re an ally of Mr. Frank. The monster he brought to the floor Thursday runs to hundreds of pages. State governments receive authority to issue $10 billion in tax-exempt bonds to subsidize home purchases and to help subprime borrowers refinance.

In a sop to builders, Mr. Frank also expands the low-income housing tax credit, and he creates a new refundable credit for certain home buyers. To help defray the cost to the Treasury, Mr. Frank raises taxes on multinational companies by delaying a scheduled reform. A law set to take effect this year would expand firms’ ability to claim foreign tax credits and thereby avoid double taxation. Mr. Frank would put it off for another year.
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We can only imagine what else is buried in this tome, which deserves a Presidential veto. But the worst problem remains its invitation for bankers to dump their biggest losers on taxpayers. The Frank plan appears to take care of everyone in the housing market, except the renters and homeowners who lived within their means.

From Bloomberg:

Bernanke Urges Action to Slow Jump in U.S. Home Foreclosures

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, seeking to end the worst housing slump in a quarter century, urged the government and mortgage lenders to intensify their efforts to avoid home foreclosures.

Bernanke, in a speech in New York yesterday, also reiterated his call for lenders to forgive portions of mortgages for some struggling homeowners. He said proposals should be “tightly targeted” at borrowers at greatest risk of losing their properties, and avoid providing an incentive for defaults.

The Fed chief also backed the idea of having the Federal Housing Administration refinance troubled mortgages, a concept included in Democratic legislation in Congress, without explicitly endorsing the bill. His remarks indicate a gap with the Bush administration, which has preferred to rely on industry-led efforts.

“Realistic public- and private-sector policies must take into account the fact that traditional foreclosure-avoidance strategies may not always work well in the current environment,” Bernanke said in remarks to a Columbia Business School dinner.
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As the housing recession deepened, officials in Washington have offered a number of different proposals. Foreclosure filings rose 57 percent in March from a year earlier, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc.

“Conditions in mortgage markets remain quite difficult, and mortgage delinquencies have climbed steeply,” Bernanke said.
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Bernanke did note that accelerating foreclosures may push home prices down further, hurting the broader economy and threatening the financial system. He anticipated the foreclosure rate will increase this year after such proceedings began on 1.5 million properties last year.

A quarterly Fed survey yesterday showed the share of banks making it tougher for companies and consumers to borrow approached a record last month in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage collapse. The Senior Loan Officers’ Survey found a net 70 percent of banks increased their loan rates over their cost of funds.
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Bernanke warned that “to be effective, such programs must be tightly targeted to borrowers at the highest risk of foreclosure.” Qualification guidelines could be set, such as identifying an amount of debt compared with income, or the extent to which the home value is below the mortgage amount, he indicated.

“Finding the right balance — particularly the need to avoid programs that give borrowers who can make their payments an incentive to default — is difficult,” the Fed chairman said.