New Jersey Real Estate Report

From USA Today:

Mortgage lenders see more borrowers give up

On the front lines in the mortgage foreclosure crisis, lender and loan servicer Dennis Lauria says his deepest losses are from borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth and simply mail in the keys, rather than try to work out a new payment plan.

“I can’t get you to pay if you’ve got no skin in the game,” says Lauria, senior vice president of Popular Mortgage Servicing in Cherry Hill, N.J., who says 14% of his customers with subprime loans — high-interest loans given to people with poor credit ratings — are in default.

Nearly 3 million homeowners were behind on their mortgages at the end of last year, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said last week. An additional 1 million-plus borrowers were at risk of imminent foreclosure. The number of foreclosures is likely to set records throughout the year and poses an increasing risk to the housing market, the financial markets and the economy.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the mortgage industry needs a “vigorous” response to help beleaguered homeowners. But what about the response — or lack of one — from borrowers?
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Nationwide, more than half the borrowers who lose their homes through foreclosure never answered their lenders’ calls or letters, according to Freddie Mac. And an MBA analysis found that 23% of loans in foreclosure last fall were to homeowners who had no contact with their lenders, and that an additional 18% were to absentee owners.

The numbers help explain why it’s so difficult to reverse the trends of rising foreclosures and falling property values. Even some homeowners who can afford to pay their mortgages are defaulting, Lauria says, because their house might have lost 30% of its value, and they figure it will be a long time before it’s worth what they paid for it.

“They say, ‘If I play my cards right, I can live here free for 12 months, maybe longer’ ” before the lender can foreclose, Lauria says. “Our challenge isn’t contacting the borrower. I can talk to them, but they stick their tongue out at me.”
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There are many reasons homeowners behind on their mortgages fail to contact their lenders, mortgage specialists say. Some don’t believe their lenders can help them. Others fear it will only speed the foreclosure process. And some don’t call because they simply don’t have money to give the lender, according to surveys by Wells Fargo and Freddie Mac.

“It’s (lenders’) own fault that borrowers won’t answer their calls,” says Todd Buckner, CEO of National Housing Solutions, a for-profit mediator between borrowers and lenders to stop foreclosures. “Their collections departments have beat (delinquent homeowners) over the head for months. It’s no wonder borrowers won’t answer the phone.”
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As home prices fall from coast to coast, 8.8 million homeowners will have mortgage balances equal to or greater than the value of their property by the end of the month, Moody’s Economy.com. predicts.

That could come as a shock to consumers who thought property values would always rise, and it helps explain the attitudes lenders are seeing among their troubled customers, Goodman says.

“If you buy a car and it depreciates,” Goodman says, “you don’t expect the automobile dealer to write off your loan. There’s a sense of entitlement (among homeowners) that is just unbelievable.”
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In New Jersey, Lauria said he sent the FHA about 3,000 of his company’s delinquent loans to see how many could be refinanced under the FHASecure program. The answer: 61.

Even for the borrowers who contact their loan servicers, the options the companies can offer are tightly constrained by their contracts with investors who buy and sell pools of loans that are packaged as bonds.

But Lauria doesn’t believe every homeowner who can’t pay their mortgage can or should be saved.

“One-third of people who are delinquent should be in foreclosure. It’s the best alternative,” he says. “They don’t have the money. They shouldn’t have (gotten the loan) to begin with.”

And that’s why, he says, he doesn’t blame some of them for walking away from their homes.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Blacklisting Hits Home Sellers
By DAWN WOTAPKA and MARSHALL ECKBLAD
March 5, 2008; Page B5A

In the nation’s worst-hit real-estate markets, home sellers are suffering a new blow: They are being blacklisted by lenders.

As property values decline and credit markets contract, home lenders nationwide are growing ever more unwilling to finance home purchases in sharply declining housing markets, driving prices down further. In some cases, lenders have ruled out entire geographic regions and property types altogether, most notably high-rise condominiums in South Florida and Las Vegas.

Lenders including BankUnited, a unit of BankUnited Financial Corp., and Vertice, a wholesale lending unit of Wachovia Corp., have elected not to lend to some areas or properties because of declining prices. Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage lender, considered a similar move last week before reversing course, and other lenders have tightened underwriting guidelines for slumping markets so as to make financing nearly unattainable.

There are “lists circulating” from banks, says Peter Zalewski, a broker with Condo Vultures Realty LLC, and those lists are pushing down prices when news of the black-marked properties spreads.
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Moreover, the blacklisting isn’t always obvious. “We don’t call it blacklisting,” said an official at a large bank. “We just don’t write the loan.”

The banks are acting to protect themselves in a steep downturn. But the drying up of loans threatens to create a self-perpetuating cycle.

“If mortgage credit dries up, then prices are going to fall more,” says Morris Davis, a professor of real estate and urban land economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business and a former economist at the Federal Reserve Board.
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Blacklisting isn’t redlining — the illegal practice of restricting lending on a socioeconomic basis — so it doesn’t run afoul of fair-lending laws, says Alexander Bono, a partner at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, a law firm in Philadelphia. Banks are allowed “to identify a county when it’s based upon something other than socioeconomic conditions” and then change its stipulations for lending there, Mr. Bono says.

Even when banks haven’t officially ruled out entire markets, the stipulations they use before lending in such areas are becoming very stringent, and can leave mortgage credit all but off-limits.
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In December, Fannie Mae, the nation’s government-sponsored mortgage-lending behemoth, issued an announcement titled “Maximum Financing in Declining Markets.”

“When a property is located in an area identified as declining,” the announcement says, the lender originating the loan must reduce the maximum amount it could otherwise lend to that buyer by 5%.

In healthy markets, New York’s J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. will currently lend borrowers a mortgage equal to as much as 90% of a property’s value. For borrowers in states that have declining markets, however, the bank reduces that maximum, says Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the bank. J.P. Morgan then reduces that level even further for borrowers in the worst declining markets, Mr. Kelly says, though he declined to provide specifics.

CitiMortgage, a wholesale lending operation of another large Wall Street bank, Citigroup Inc., maintains a list of “declining market areas” that red-flags dozens of counties in more than 10 states. Citi reduces the amount it will lend for properties in those counties “by at least 5%,” the document says.

“We routinely review our credit parameters, including maximum loan-to-value ratios, in declining markets,” says Mark Rogers, a CitiMortgage spokesman.

One silver lining: For “all-cash buyers,” Mr. Zalewski says, the lists are “heaven sent.”

Buyers who have cash “can use that to negotiate,” he says: “If you don’t sell to us, who are you going to sell to?”

From MarketWatch:

Troubles emerge in alt-A loans as delinquencies ratchet up

The other shoe just dropped in the U.S. mortgage market.

In the last month, pressure has intensified around mortgage securities made up of so-called Alt-A loans, fueling concerns that a fresh round of losses are awaiting Wall Street firms and other lenders at a time when these companies are struggling to get back on their feet amid the ongoing credit crunch.

Although rising delinquencies have mostly been concentrated among subprime borrowers, recent data show more creditworthy borrowers are increasingly falling behind their payments, underscoring the point that the mortgage meltdown isn’t confined to only those with weak credit.

“You can’t be sure of the performance of these products when it isn’t known how they will perform during stressful times,” said Mark Adelson, a principal at Adelson & Jacob Consulting LLC, which consults on securitization and real-estate issues. “There is potential for a fresh wave of losses.”

Alt-A loans are made to borrowers with generally strong credit but are loans that lack adequate verification, for instance, of income or assets. The lax paperwork paved the way for aggressive lending to the less creditworthy and emboldened borrowers to exaggerate their financial prowess.

In 2006, $612 billion of Alt-A mortgages were underwritten, according to National Mortgage News, a trade publication, while in 2007, there were an estimated $400 billion.
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Worst affected are bonds that are made up of the more aggressive type of Alt-A mortgages, such as interest-only loans that allow homeowners to postpone principal payments and loans issued in 2006 and part of 2007, when lending standards were loosened. Bonds backed by mortgages in this category are trading as low as 70 cents on the dollar, said two market participants, after selling at par, that is, 100 cents on the dollar, or even higher, about a year ago.
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“The performance of Alt-A mortgages for the 2006-2007 vintages is getting much worse than people had earlier expected,” said Walt Schmidt, manager of structured products strategy at FTN Financial in Chicago.

Delinquency rates for borrowers behind on their mortgage payments by 30 days has been climbing steadily higher since December. In February, the rate jumped to 3.89%, compared with zero as recently as November, according to remittance reports that track performance of home loans.

“Generally speaking, I do not believe Alt-A credit is any better than subprime,” said Alan Fournier, the managing member of Pennant Capital Management LLC in Chatham, N.J. “The performance of this market doesn’t surprise me, given what’s happening to home prices and credit availability today.”

From the Wall Street Journal:

Fannie, Freddie Set Stricter Appraisal Rules
By JAMES R. HAGERTY and AMIR EFRATI
March 4, 2008; Page A3

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced an agreement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to discourage inflated appraisals by enforcing new standards in the home-mortgage market.

Seeking to head off the threat of lawsuits from Mr. Cuomo, the two government-sponsored providers of funding for mortgage loans agreed to a code of conduct due to take effect next Jan. 1. Because Fannie and Freddie are the dominant sources of funds for home loans, the code will become an effective standard for the industry.

The code bars lenders and their representatives from pressuring appraisers to supply inflated estimates of property values, which are widely viewed as an important contributor to the mortgage crisis. Appraisers have long complained that they risked losing business if they didn’t appraise homes at values that would allow loans to be made.

Bank employees who are involved in making loans won’t be allowed to choose appraisers. And lenders won’t be able to make loans on the basis of appraisals from their own employees or from other companies they control.

The code also bars lenders from using appraisals ordered by mortgage brokers. The National Association of Mortgage Brokers said that rule could drive many brokers out of business. Officials of the trade group said appraisals ordered by brokers sometimes can be used for more than one potential lender, giving the consumer more flexibility. Under the new code, they said, consumers who use brokers might end up paying for two appraisals. Mr. Cuomo said he didn’t believe the code would hurt brokers who follow “legitimate” practices.
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Lenders generally require appraisals before making home loans. The appraisal is supposed to ensure that the lender has an authoritative estimate of the property’s value. An inflated appraisal can cause lenders to advance more money than a house is worth, exposing both lender and borrower to losses, especially when home prices fall.

“In my opinion, 70% to 80% of appraisals that were done during the housing boom are probably not worth the paper they’re written on,” said Jonathan J. Miller, a New York appraiser and longtime critic of industry practices. He estimates that home values are overvalued nationwide by at least 10% because of inflated appraisals.