First Quarter 2008: Graph of Homeownership Rates

Interesting how much homeownership rates vary by region. The midwest has the highest rate, yet they saw the least change in price appreciation during the housing boom. Markets in the west and northeast have the lowest rates (and the highest home prices).

Hmmm, let me see…. higher prices = lower affordability = lower home ownership rates = more creative financing.

The Economist magazine appropriately named Map of misery article on US Housing showcases a map of OFHEO data that chronicles the change in housing prices by County/State.

The pain of America’s housing bust varies enormously by region. Hardest hit have been the “bubble states”—California, Nevada and Florida, and parts of the industrial Midwest. The biggest uncertainty hanging over the economy is how red will things get.

Yesterday I joked about Bernanke using heat maps and The Economist saw the humor in it as well.

Sounding more like a cartographer than a central banker, Ben Bernanke this week showed off the Federal Reserve’s latest gizmo for tracking America’s property bust: maps that colour-code price declines, foreclosures and other gauges of housing distress for every county. His goal was to show that falling prices meant more foreclosures, and to urge lenders to write down the principal on troubled loans where the house is worth less than the value of the mortgage. His maps—where hotter colours imply more trouble—also make a starker point. The pain of America’s housing bust varies enormously by region. Hardest hit have been the “bubble states”—California, Nevada and Florida, and parts of the industrial Midwest. The biggest uncertainty hanging over the economy is how red will things get.

But can a “bottom” be projected?

One of the most favored ways to measure a housing market by The Economist magazine is to track the ratio of rental prices to sales prices. From 1960 to 1995, rent/price was 5% to 5.5%. When prices soared over the last decade, the ratio is 3.5%. In order to get the ratio back up to 5%, prices have to drop 10% to 15% assuming rents are flat. It’s lookin’ like at least 2010 before this happens.

In terms of projecting when we will see an end to the weak housing market, try correlating it with handgun accuracy. NYC police officers hit their targets roughly 34 percent of the time. Of course, when they fire at dogs, roughly 55 percent of shots hit home.

Ok, let me get this straight. Fannie Mae:

• lost $2.2B in Q1
• borrowed $7B and cut dividend by 30% at the end of ‘07
• will borrow $6B and cut dividend further this year
• rating agencies put some of Fannie’s ratings on negative watch
• $83B cushion for $5T in debt
• OFHEO is optimistic, investors are excited?

Actually Fannie Mae’s stock dropped 5.7% yesterday so maybe it’s not love afterall.

Ok, what am I missing here? It seems to me that the GSEs can not be the housing market’s sole saviours and we risk serious damage to our financial system if housing drops sharply this year and Fannie & Freddie get taken over by the government and assume the liabilities…

But some financial experts worry that the companies are dangerously close to the edge, especially if home prices go through another steep decline. Their combined cushion of $83 billion — the capital that their regulator requires them to hold — underpins a colossal $5 trillion in debt and other financial commitments.

The companies, which were created by Congress but are owned by investors, suffered more than $9 billion in mortgage-related losses last year, and analysts expect those losses to grow this year.

More regulation is need to protect the GSEs from faltering. OFHEO lowered their capital requirements in exchange for making Fannie Mae go out and borrower $6B to help protect against further housing market declines.

“Regulators need all the tools they can get to make sure these companies don’t fail, especially since we’re talking about entities that have over $5 trillion in financial commitments and debt,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee. “Six billion dollars looks like a pretty paltry sum, and if we get into a further housing downturn, that capital can go pretty fast.”

The dilemma (although its not really a dilemma because there few other options) is whether to entrust the GSE to get the nation out of the mortgage problem that is keeping housing from stabilizing.

Increased roles for Fannie and Freddie could be just what the doctor ordered to maintain confidence and liquidity in the mortgage markets at a crucial time and stave off a far greater crisis. However, if the crisis continues to deepen, these companies could go under and possibly push the worldwide financial system into turmoil.

William Poole, a former Federal Reserve Bank president, said that Fannie and Freddie are “at the top of my list of sources of potentially serious trouble.” And according to Senator Mel Martinez, a former secretary of housing and urban development, the companies “could cause an economywide meltdown if they got into real trouble and leave the public on the hook for billions.”

It seems to me like this is one small solution of many others that are needed. It’s going to be a long time to ride out this downturn and common sense says that the GSEs can’t weather it alone. FHA lost money last year too. I am starting to think we are making things worse by trying to fix the problem.

Here’s a great piece by Randall Forsyth of Barrons called Show Me the Monet where he says more than half of all homeowners who bought in ‘06 are underwater and that’s the tipping point for foreclosures. He wonders how the worst of the credit crisis can be behind us.

It’s bad enough that the current NAR chief economist has made himself irrelevant by continues to say some crazy things about the housing market:

Two things homebuyers shouldn’t have to worry about is a recession or long-term credit crunch.

Yun, who admits that he has to balance empirical data with a role of advocacy for the housing market, said that while the beginning of 2008 has been weak so far, the second half of the year should see an uptick that could lead to home value growth of more than 20 percent in the next five years. “I think there is enough momentum to bring the buyers back into the market,” Yun said.

His adventures are well chronicled in Lawrence Yun Watch which followed the widely read David Lereah Watch who was his predecessor.

Now we are seeing the former cheerleader for NAR, David Lereah espousing negative views on housing.

David Lereah was the poster boy for all that was wrong with the housing boom. He wasn’t that subtle about spin, or perhaps an organization like his didn’t have the blogosphere to contend with before he came on the scene.

David Lereah moved on to Move and when they experienced problems, moved on to his startup Reecon Advisors, which provides advice to Wall Street. Interesting. Didn’t Wall Street read the newspapers during the housing boom? What advice are they looking for?

I guess the only point to this post is that I find it amazing that someone, who is so smart and articulate, take the dubious path that he took, and still be able to sell books and be paid for advice, which contrasts what he doled out for years with NAR and apparently trained his successor well.

I have so much to learn.

I was interviewed by Suzanne Pratt of the long running PBS Nightly Business Report that was broadcast last night. She was covering the New York part of a five city series called A Tale of 5 Cities that covers Washington, DC, New York, Detroit, Silicon Valley and South Florida.

My immediate thought after watching the first segment (on tuesday) concerned a comment someone made that went something like:

…when the housing market stabilizes….

I am trying to figure out what that phrase really means. In other words, does that mean the rate of sales will level off, the pace of sales decline will ease, sales prices will flatten, the pace of sales decline will level off, permits will rise, inventory will level off, etc.

And what is going to get better in the short term to make the market reach a bottom, however it is defined? For the life of me, I don’t know right now. Affordability would be the obvious choice but tighter credit has made it necessary for housing prices to fall further before affordability is on par with a year or two ago. More time needs to pass and more things need to shake out.

Here’s the PBS Nightly Business Report broadcast (4:36).

UPDATE: View the transcript

The FRB’s April 2008 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices showed that:

In the April survey, domestic and foreign institutions reported having further tightened their lending standards and terms on a broad range of loan categories over the previous three months. The net fractions of domestic banks reporting tighter lending standards were close to, or above, historical highs for nearly all loan categories in the survey.

In other words, it’s a lot harder to obtain financing.

Chairman of the Federal Reserve said in a speech yesterday that the decline in home prices was different this time and more flexibility in solving the problem is called for.

In a 10-page speech, Mr. Bernanke said (is 10 pages double spaced supposed to be significant?) that some regions of the country including California, Florida, Colorado and parts of the Midwest have experienced sharp increases in the number of homeowners who are delinquent on their mortgages, despite data that does not reveal the classic causes of foreclosures, like higher unemployment rates.

Instead, much of the problem can be attributed to a decline in home prices, which, Mr. Bernanke said, can “reduce the ability and incentive of homeowners, particularly those under financial stress for other reasons, to retain their homes.”

(image of lightbulb turning on) Borrowers were allowed to have mortgages they could not afford and speculators have less incentive to hold on to their properties. Economic vulnerability is made even more precarious by the vulnerability of the GSEs. (Today, Fannie Mae Posted unexpected losses associated with credit performance).

Bernanke’s comments on GSEs

Separately, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)–Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–could do more. Recently, the Congress expanded Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s role in the mortgage market by temporarily increasing the limits on the sizes of the mortgages they can accept for securitization. In addition, because the GSEs have resolved some of their accounting and operational problems, their federal regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, has lifted some of the constraints that it had imposed on them. Thus, now is an especially appropriate time for the GSEs to move quickly to raise significant new capital, which they will need to take advantage of these new securitization and investment opportunities, to provide assistance to the housing markets in times of stress, and to do so in a safe and sound manner.

As the GSEs expand their role in housing markets, the Congress should move forward on GSE reform legislation, which includes strengthening the regulatory oversight of these companies. As the Federal Reserve has testified on many occasions, it is very important for the health and stability of our housing finance system that the Congress provide the GSE regulator with broad authority to set capital standards, establish a clear and credible receivership process, and define and monitor a transparent public purpose–one that transcends just shareholder interests–for the accumulation of assets held in their portfolios.

Bernanke actually says “Location, Location, Location”
There is significant locational disparity in the performance of housing markets across the country. Bernanke showed a very cool set of heat maps on a variety metrics.

When a lender is issuing mortgages to be competitive with their fellow banks, common sense can take a holiday. Over the past several years the proliferation of no doc or “liar loans” showed that the wheels came off the mortgage lending wagon. All common sense, reasoning and rationale thought was thrown out the window. At what point does negligence become criminal?

Q: Can any imagine lending money to someone today, basing the decision to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to a borrower who doesn’t need to prove their income and take very little effort to understand the value of the asset being used as collateral? Oh yeah, and then securitize those mortgages to legions of unwitting investors (with full disclosure, of course)?

A: Never in a million years, or less than a year ago, whichever comes first.

It looks like the FBI is getting involved. They have formed a task force to investigate whether lenders turned a blind eye to inflated income figures. It would seem fairly simple to cross check mortgages and stated income paid for taxes. The IRS and the FBI may very well be working together a lot in the near future.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service have formed a task force to examine mortgages that were made with little or no proof of the earnings or assets of borrowers, a government official who had been briefed on the matter said Sunday.

The task force, which was established in January, stepped up its investigation in recent weeks as the financial industry disclosed billions of dollars in additional write-downs from bad mortgage investments. The latest inquiry is broader and deeper than a separate F.B.I. investigation of mortgage lenders that is also under way.

While the new task force is focusing on the role of mortgage lenders and brokers in low- or no-documentation loans, it is also examining how the loans were bundled into securities.

“This is a look at the mortgage industry across the board, and it has gotten a lot more momentum in recent weeks because of the banks’ earnings shortfalls,” the official said.

Speaking of turning a blind eye: Sure, Jonathan Miller Can Value Your Home, But Can He Cook?

Did a lot of painting inside my house this weekend so I apologize if some of the paint ended up on this post.

The comment period has ended but the debate rages on within the appraisal profession: the new mortgage process that does not allow appraisals to be ordered by mortgage brokers will have the effect of enabling appraisal management companies and end up with an unreliable appraisal product. Two different paths taken to the same end: crummy collateral asset quality.

I am guessing the OCC is going to get busy, gaining back the limelight on the mortgage lending process from the NY AG’s office.

James Hagarty wrote a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal called Who Should Profit From Home Appraisals? about the political storm that has only just begun. What I find disappointing is how self-serving the players have become. Nothing wrong with advocating for your constituents, that is their job. The part that rubs me wrong is that it has become so predictable. The trade groups seem to be saying the old system worked just fine. Of course that is a complete disconnect from reality.

How does one explain how we got here? And are we going in the right direction?

• Appraisal Management Companies (Title/Appraisal Vendor Management Association) - banks pay them about the same fee as the appraiser would get but they keep 30% to 60% of the fee and work hard to find appraiser (form-fillers) who will work at fees that don”t allow them to do research in the appraisal process. It’s laughable that the trade group contends they pay market rate to appraisers. Market rate for AMCs, I think is what he means. The AMC model doesn’t work paying market rates. It has been my experience that most appraisals I have seen done for AMCs are usually not worth the paper they are written on. The lower caliber appraisers they are forced to use experienced a flood of business during the housing boom. It is going to be interesting to see how that caliber of appraiser fares in a tighter underwriting environment.

The AMCs keep a big share of the fees consumers pay, typically at least 30% and sometimes more than half, appraisers and AMC executives say. The AMCs say they provide a valuable service by maintaining networks of local appraisers and controlling quality. “The AMCs pay market rate” to local appraisers, says Jeff Schurman, executive director of the Title/Appraisal Vendor Management Association, a trade group.

• Mortgage Brokers (National Association of Mortgage Brokers) - they want the appraisal industry to self-police and get rid of appraisers who turned in falsified work. Yes that has worked so well already (sarcastic emphasis). While we are at it, let’s tell mortgage brokers not to press appraisers for a higher value than they know is right or withhold payment from an appraiser for not making the number. Unbelievable. This mortgage brokerage group should be ashamed of themselves for taking the scare tactic approach that consumers will be forced to pay much higher fees. How much has the current mess already cost consumers?

• Appraisers (Appraisal Institute) - Appraisers have flip-flopped on this issue. Initially they applauded the Cuomo agreement but were disconnected from what the industry wanted. The industry has been roiling for the past month over the empowerment of AMCs. I think this trade group, which is inherently commercial appraiser centric rather than focused on the plight of residential appraisers, is so worried about AMCs that they are willing to accept the lesser evil of allowing mortgage brokers to control the appraisal (bingo!). Loss of competent appraisers versus standing up to intense pressure to play ball. Not much of a choice.

• OFHEO (HUD) - They seem to be detached from this whole situation yet they are the oversight agency for the GSEs. Amazing.

• FDIC - No comments submitted (yet they insure lenders and provide bank oversight).

• Federal Reserve - No comments submitted (yet they manage the health of the banking system).

• Congress - proposing lots of ideas but most of them of no real help or will provide a benefit after it is too late. Hard to parse out grandstanding from heartfelt concern. I’d like to think they are really trying to fix it.

• OCC (Treasury Department) - No comments submitted and boy are they pissed off. Their turf has been stepped on. Actually, it has been stomped on. I’d expect a lot more statements from the OCC in the near future.

Bottom line: If we want the lending system to have the collateral value estimate free from corruption and influence, then appraisal management companies, bank loan officers and mortgage brokers have no business whatsoever, ordering appraisals directly because they have a vested in their outcome. I believe it is called commingling interests.

Comments or no comments, I find it hard to believe that OCC will allow this to happen without making their own agreement. Otherwise, they will become as non-existent as OFHEO was during the housing boom.

Also check out: The Housing Crisis & The Plague of Potomac Fever

Periodically, I like to round-up some of my favorite recent blog posts that are housing market/credit/economy related. And a good reason to mention Cinco de Mayo even though it has no connection with any of these posts.

Quote of the week…

In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear. - John C. Dvorak

• What Happens When You Over-Price Real Estate? [Searchlight Crusade]

• Envisioning Employment: Employment Situation April 2008 [Paper Economy]

• Another ride around the REO block [Inman Blog]

• The Future of Mortgage Brokers [RCG]

• How Do You Spell MLS? [Bloodhound Blog]

• BuildingSpotter: Know Your “Iron Man” Landmarks [Curbed LA]

• Reports from the Field: Putting the ‘Sex’ in Sexton [Behind the Mortgage]

• Ooh, I Feel So Stimulated! [My Open Wallet]

• Flashback: Sellsius Teams With Engadget [Sellsius]

• Task Force May Widen Federal and State Investigation into Mortgage Irregularities [Mortgage News Daily]

• Jose Canseco Exercises Free Housing Put Option [Housing Derivatives]

• Liquidity isn’t apple pie [interfluidity]

• U.S. Unemployment Rate [GREG MANKIW’S BLOG]

• Rebuttal To SmartMoney Housing Bottom Call [Mish]

It’s About Soccer, Not Football

Chalking this up to weird timing, but Treasury Secretary Paulson announced plans a few weeks ago to fix the financial markets. It would take a long time to legislate and would not likely be completed before President Bush finishes up his term. What the housing market really needed back then, was leadership on solutions covering the immediate problems such as the lack of credit availability or liquidity and a US economy teetering towards a recession.

In James Surowiecki’s excellent Parsing Paulson piece in the New Yorker, he notes:

As the press has noted, the plan would consolidate our myriad and overlapping regulators into fewer, bigger ones. But the most interesting thing about it is something subtler: a push to move from our current system of regulation—often known as “rules-based”—toward a “principles-based” approach. In a rules-based system, lawmakers and regulators try to prescribe in great detail exactly what companies must and must not do to meet their obligations to shareholders and clients. In principles-based systems, which are more common in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, regulators worry less about dotted “i”s and crossed “t”s, and instead evaluate companies’ behavior according to broad principles; the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority has eleven such principles, which are often deliberately vague (“A firm must observe proper standards of market conduct”). This approach gives companies more leeway in dealing with investors and customers—not every company needs to follow the same rules on, say, financial reporting—but it also gives regulators more leeway in judging whether a company is really acting in the best interests of shareholders and consumers.

Football (Rules-based)
In a rules-based environment like Wall Street has now, there a lot of rules that the financial institutions must follow and the regulators enforce the rules. Football, like most American sports, is heavily rule-bound. There’s an elaborate rulebook that sharply limits what players can and can’t do (down to where they have to stand on the field), and its dictates are followed with great care.

Soccer (Principles-based)
The regulators have more authority to interpret and pass judgement on the activities of Wall Street. Soccer is a more principles-based game. There are fewer rules, and the referee is given far more authority than officials in most American sports to interpret them and to shape game play and outcomes. For instance, a soccer referee keeps the game time, and at game’s end has the discretion to add as many or as few minutes of extra time as he deems necessary. There’s also less obsession with precision—players making a free kick or throw-in don’t have to pinpoint exactly where it should be taken from. As long as it’s in the general vicinity of the right spot, it’s O.K.

Not surprisingly, Wall Street favors the principles-based approach rather than rules based (it’s likely to be less complex and less onerous to comply with). Paulson is an ex-Wall Streeter.

Aside
In Newsweek, one of Henry Paulson’s top Treasury Department aides spoke on how United States and world policymakers are responding to the fallout of the global credit crunch.

The short answer is that we are in the midst of a phenomenon painfully familiar to Americans. From the gold rush to the Internet bubble, cycles of innovation, excess, adaptation and recovery to a point of even greater prosperity have defined America’s economic progress. In the present situation, we are seeing the rough edges of the same recent financial innovation that has brought enormous benefits to many investors, businesses and consumers. But these net benefits are of little consolation to the Americans whose lives are being seriously disrupted by the current financial-market turmoil. In response, policymakers in the United States and around the world are taking aggressive and targeted actions to stabilize financial markets, reduce the impact of markets on the U.S. economy and protect against the same mistakes’ being repeated.

blah, blah, blah

But now, focus is shifting to correcting the problems on Wall Street with the adaptation of successful new financial products. Thats where the new solutions to the credit crisis will get interesting.

As the immediate remedies take effect, we have also begun to focus on the weaknesses in business practices of financial institutions that this experience has revealed, and on fragmented U.S. and European regulatory structures that had difficulties guarding against or responding to modern challenges. U.S. and international policymakers are acting in a targeted but comprehensive way to address the causes of current market instability with steps including strengthening the oversight of risk management and reporting practices of global financial institutions; enhancing disclosure of and the process for setting values for complex products; changing and clarifying the role and use of credit ratings; strengthening the process by which national authorities monitor and respond to risk, and reforming the mortgage-origination process. In each of these broad categories, the specific proposals are concrete, widely accepted and, in a number of cases, already being implemented by national or international authorities as well as by the private sector.

Charting the source: Where news happens… or, more accurately, where news is reported from [Reuters]