Maxxxed out!!! ...and looking for a 'soft landing'
See this picture to the left. That person is doing what is called 'maxing out' on a lift, in this case the bench press. After warming up, the lifter attempts to do one rep at the max weight possible. Let's compare this lifter to some of the borrowers that maxed themselves out to buy a home, and/or live a lifestyle.This lifter is at a point where he cannot handle anymore weight. Many borrowers are at a point where they cannot handle anymore debt. If you listen to all the bubble critics out there, they will tell you that adjusting ARMs and other things won't affect people that much. They will find a way to make their mortgage payment. But what about the people who got I/O ARMs at 55% DTI, or the people that had to go stated because they couldn't meet the debt ratios? You have seen my posts about how much payments can jump when ARMs adjust and/or rates go up (both are happening). Let's look at this lifter, he is currently bench pressing 644lbs. Do you think he could handle things if you added say another 10% to his weight (64lbs)?? Do you think he could handle another 20%, 30%? I have shown in earlier posts how payments can jump 20-30% or more in one shot when ARMs adjust. So lets just say we added another 128lbs (20%) to the bar right now....what kind of "soft landing" do you think his chest would be in for?? What kind of soft landing do you think is in store for the borrowers that are financially maxed out on their debt payments? Am I making any sense here?!?!?
I also want to talk about another type of scenario I am running into more and more. It involves the borrowers that bought with 100% or other high LTV financing and are now trying to refinance to either avoid an adjusting ARM, or pull some cash out. On paper, most of these people have some sort of equity, the problem is getting to that equity. As you all know, rates have gone up...especially in the higher LTV ranges. The investors are getting wary of lending 90% or more of the value of a property. Since it is their money, they seem to want a higher risk premium to pay for the risk that properties might go down 5-10%...or more. The market for 2nd mortgages is also tightening up as well. I was talking to a counterpart at another lender, and they said the same thing. The investors don't want the 2nd liens, and if they do, they want a high rate to compentsate them for their risk.
The rates today are MUCH higher than they were 6-24 months ago when many of these people bought or last refi'd. I have had 3-4 loans the past week where borrowers NEED to refi to pull out 8-12k cash. The problem is that most lenders won't do a refinance unless the borrower is pulling out a decent amount of cash. It doesn't look good when somebody pays $8000 to get $10,000 cash out. That is like paying 80 cents to borrow a dollar. "What you talkin about, Willis!?!?" That's right...many of these people need to make a 'cash call' with Gary Coloman, not refinance their entire loan to get a few grand cash out.
All in all, I think the subprime market is going to be in a for a rough time in the future. I know of 2 companies that stopped offereing subprime loans this month. They closed down their entire subprime operations. I know that popular opinion is that the subprime market will keep growing as more and more people get into debt and have their credit drop. In that sense, they are correct. There will always be subprime borrowers, but what will happen is that the 'risk premium' will return to the equation.
In the 'old days' subprime loans were noticibly pricier than their A-paper counterparts. BUT, over the past few years, competition for this segment of borrowers has grown tremendously. Lending to subprime borrowers was good business. You could charge higher rates, and with property appreciating the way it was, the lender was in kind of a win-win situation. They made more money on the loans, or if the borrower defaulted, they were holding an appreciating asset. The problem is that competition drove the rates down and eroded the 'risk premium' that made the loans financially possible.
The drive for market share and volume meant one thing...lower the standards and do loans others won't do. If companies will compete on rate, do you think they will compete on "lowering standards"?? Yes, they will. The combination of competing on rate and standards really led to 'giving anybody a loan'. As long as you could drive volume, things were good. After all, the statistics for defaults were still at all time lows. So let's keep lending!!!
Nevermind the fact that defaults were low because borrowers could refi or sell if they ever got into trouble. The appreciation machine saved many of these borrowers. You can make a lot of screw-ups with your finances when your property is going up 6-figures a year. Heck, most people's property was appreciating at a rate that was higher than their own salary!! I was talking to a doctor last week. His property went up over $300k in approximately 2 years. His condo appreciation almost outpaced his earnings from working as a doctor full-time for 2 years!! Can you expect that to continue forever?!?!?
All in all, I don't know how this is going to pan out, nobody does. All I can do is point out through facts, data, and personal experiences why I don't think things can continue as they have the past few years, and I certainly don't see a soft landing in the near future.
What do you think?!?!?
SoCalMtgGuy
posted by SoCalMtgGuy at 9:28 PM
17 Comments:
What you are saying is all fine and I agree on all of it; I already did before.
What is new for this week is that refinancing activity seems to be picking up pace again since the bond market is still defying gravity. Have you personally seen this at your work, SoCalMthGuy? Is there movement towards fixed rate loans from ARMs?
I also heard stories that people are paying a lot just to pull out enough cash to pay mortgage for the next three months.
They are probably hoping for a spring bounce, which I doubt will materialize. Perhaps they contribute to the refinancing activity?
They are so f@cked.
un,
I have not seen a huge push towards fixed rate loans this week, but that really doesn't mean much.
I'm sure that people are awakening from the post holiday slumber...and getting their credit card bills and the realization that taxes are due here soon.
Many people will be able to refi into fixed rate loans, but there is a whole segment of the market that cannot afford fixed rate loans at this time. It is this segment that provided much of the demand to push prices higher.
SoCalMtgGuy
Socal-
Very interesting observation!
I think we are seeing a peek at what happens when many of the factors that helped the boom change direction (interest rates, lending standards, risk premium requirements, etc.)
The borrowers you describe are already f-ed, they have no chance if house prices start going down, even a little-
1. Cash out refi needed-> bigger loan amount to pay for at higher rates, less equity.
2. House values decline-> remaining equity evaporates, turns negative.
So they pay more each month, have a higher loan balance and have no equity to bail them out.
Ouch!
exactly!
And this amount of the population doesn't have to be huge to have a large impact.
20,000 homes in Orange County is not a lot percentage wise, but if they all HAD to sell in a 2-6 month window, that would have a dramatic impact on the overall market.
Same for any area.
SoCalMtgGuy
Among my morbid hobbies is watching the public records of a couple specific investors in the area. I wasn't surprised when one refinanced her primary residence to come up with down payments to buy money-losing rentals. I was surprised when she did a second refinance, seven months later when interest rates were running higher. Since no additional purchases appear in the records of the most likely counties, I suspect the second refi was to help cover the mortgage payments of the existing rentals.
That seems like the point at which it's not so much an investment as speculation... and losing speculation, at that.
DrWende, I like that hobby! How can I check a property in Northern NJ to see what mortgages/liens are on it? thank you.
You know, as a renter I've been reading this and a few other real estate & macroecon blogs with great interest -- the obvious hope being that a significant decline in RE prices would allow me to buy a decent home. But it's now getting to the point where I'm actually more worried than hopeful. Not worried that a decline won't happen -- worried that the decline will quickly become a crash that will drag the entire U.S. economy down with it. The "home as an ATM" phenomenon is particularly scary in this respect -- and precisely what today's post addresses. If consumer spending is what has driven economic growth for the past several years, and equity lines of credit have provided a significant portion of the capital for that spending, what happens with the HELOC activity drops by 90%? Does GDP drop by 1%, 2%, 3%? This could get really, really ugly before it's over...
Here's a good site that explains basic terms of the mortgage industry:
http://searchwarp.com/swa18977.htm
I liked the analogy.
Anonymous in Northern NJ -- To check property records easily, you need a county that makes its records searchable online. The whole record itself is unlikely to be online (here, that's illegal) but you can often trace a pattern without having the actual numbers.
I'm in California, so NJ may be different, but let me tell you what I look at, as a starting point.
"Official Public Records," usually linked from County Clerk or Clerk/Recorder on a county's site: these are sorted by grantor/grantee and (in CA) don't contain property addresses. Liens show up here -- you just may not be told what property they're originally against.
Assessments, provided by the Assessor-Recorder or similar. These are by address or parcel (which is often cross-referenced with address). This will often tell you if property taxes are delinquent but won't necessarily show other types of liens and or give the owner's name.
How do you match a name to an address? One option is to go in person to the county offices and read the records. The other is to find a third source -- phonebook, newspaper listing of homes sold, etc. -- that fills in the missing information. If Prudential realty is out there, their Web site has a "watch your home's value" feature that will disgorge the names of all the owners on the same block as the address you give them.
There are usually details that you can only get from the physical document. But out here, I know that if I see a GRANT DEED, that's a transfer of property, and if I see a TRUST DEED, that's a mortgage. So a trust deed without a matching grant deed is a refinance. (And a grant deed with two trust deeds executed that day means a piggyback mortgage.) NJ may use different terms for these documents, too.
The first time you go to work this out for your locale, it is incredibly tedious! Then once you know what works locally, it's fun and easy.
Alas, the most interesting county in my region is too poor to provide an online records search... :-(
DrWende, Will do thanks.
I am also a socal mtg guy, but do commercial. Love the site, just found it. Still seeing alot of activity, holding our breath on value.
A house down the street is a FB - this is sunny south OC.
I bought and moved in around the same time these people did - June 2005. Theirs is now up for sale in January 2006; I have not met them, but I did do some research.
Its a sweet house - 2600+ SF, %BRs, less than 5 years old, upgraded to the max. These people bought it at $880k back in May. Current comps put this house comfortably in the $920-$950K range now (yes, stuf fout here appreciated in the 2nd half of 2005 - go figure). So, they listed at at cool $1mil.
These people used 100% financing. Ugh. Quick calculation - that's like $5k a month just in mortgage payments, assuming they used some sort of funky financing (more like $7K otherwise). Taxes at around $1K/month and a couple hundy per month in HOA dues to boot.
I asked why they are selling, broker tells me "they miss their out of state family, and want to move back".
Uh-huh. Sure. I think they miss their disposable income. A $5k/month or more house payment, compounded by payments on 2 of those large Lexus SUVs, is tough to swallow on anyone's income (I make well north of $100K and I wouldn't sign up for that pain without Vinny or perhaps his associate Luigi holding a gun to my chin).
Do the math. Say $880K purchase, $5k/month in mortgage payments. That's $30K in prepays. Add in 7% for tranaction costs (broker fees, etc.) - another $60K or so. That puts him at $970K or so. The $30K cushion was probably kept as negotiating cushion, or for capital gains purposes (don't know his tax situation).
$970K to break even. House is worth, maybe, $950K - my guess is it would pop at around $900-$920K in reality.
This guy's screwed. And, very few investors would step up in this circumstance (unless there was no broker).
A radio bankruptcy ad came on the air while driving home. It claimed that 95% of credit card holders only pay the minimum payment. Is this correct? I believe this is a fake statistic into befriending a FB.
In my circle, only two-three pay minimums and live paycheck to paycheck. At least those people don't have a mortgage.
I read the 60% figure myself...we pay off in full every month..of course we only use about 30% of available credit also. My husband has to ask me to please use the card once in awhile inorder to keep up some sort of useage.
mtnrunne2
That is probably true. Only 3% of the loans might have an LTV of over 90%.
BUT, they did not say CLTV...that is combined loan to value!!!
All of those 80/20's and 80/10 and 80/15 would NOT fall into the LTV over 90% category.
It is a harder stat to track, the CLTV that people owe. Somebody had an 80% first, then took out a HELOC or 2nd to push the CLTV over 90...they won't be accounted for in that stat.
SoCalMtgGuy
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