Why You Should Consider Buying a New Home

In this day of drop-dead prices on existing homes, why would anyone shell out for a new house? Amy Hoak on Lunch Break says there are a few good reasons why home buyers should not ignore new-home construction in their search.

Rate Drop Spurs Home Refinancing

By NICK TIMIRAOS SEPTEMBER 24, 2011 for WSJ.com

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dipped below 4%, possibly triggering a refinancing boom for many of the same borrowers who already have taken advantage of rock-bottom interest rates.

According to a survey by Credit Suisse on Thursday, lenders were offering an average rate of 3.91% on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages to borrowers who paid "points," or fees, worth 1% of the loan balance.

Wells Fargo & Co. advertised on its website Friday afternoon a 3.875% rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, with fees of 1% on the loan.

Lou Barnes, a mortgage banker in Boulder, Colo., refinanced four borrowers on Thursday into 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at 3.875%. "At this point, the only people being helped are those who need it the least," he said.

For the home-sales market, low rates will help make homes more affordable, but may not boost home buying if consumers are worried about the economy.

"Today, the buyers' concern is the falling value of homes," said Mr. Barnes. "I've had potential buyers say: 'I don't care if rates are zero if prices are going to fall again.' "

Mortgages rates fell this past week after the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday that it would begin plowing payments from its portfolio of $885 billion in government-backed mortgage bonds back into mortgages. That caused a rally in the mortgage market because the Fed's move eliminates the risk that the central bank would be forced to sell its mortgage holdings as refinancing increases.

Mortgages rarely have been this cheap. A 1961 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that loans made to World War II veterans in the late 1940s were available with 4% rates.

More than 60% of borrowers with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage could reduce their mortgage rate by one percentage point, up from 42% at the beginning of August, according to Credit Suisse.

But some borrowers haven't been able to refinance rates because they can't qualify under loan standards that are much tighter than at the time of their first loan. Other borrowers don't have enough equity in their home to refinance.

Before the housing crisis, refinancing tended to jump when borrowers were able to lower their rate by 0.5 percentage point. Since 2009, mortgage applications have taken longer to process, while riskier borrowers have faced higher refinancing costs. As a result, borrowers typically now refinance when rates are 1.5 percentage points below their current rate, according to Bank of America mortgage analysts.

Donald Fraser, a 56-year old pathology assistant who shaved a full percentage point off the 4.875% mortgage he got last year, said he plans to stash most of the $2,700 a year in savings into retirement. "I don't think we'll ever see these rates in my lifetime or yours," he said.

It isn't clear how much these lower rates will help the economy, in part because a weakening economy is fueling the decline.

"We felt lucky. At the same time, we're lucky at the expense of a suffering market," said Richard Klompus, who refinanced his Glastonbury, Conn., home with a 4%, 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

Mr. Klompus, 49, had a hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage that carries a 4.5% rate for the first five years before moving to a variable rate. He paid tens of thousands of dollars to pay down his loan balance to $417,000, the maximum size for loans eligible for purchase by mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

To encourage refinancing, Obama administration officials and U.S. regulators are in talks with lenders about ways to revamp an existing White House refinancing initiative designed to help borrowers with little or no equity. The program is open to borrowers whose loans are backed by Fannie and Freddie, which guarantee about half of all outstanding home loans.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie, is weighing a series of changes to the program, which has been snarled by a series of technical hurdles. Just 838,000 borrowers have refinanced, short of the hoped-for four million to five million. Just 63,000 of those borrowers have loans worth more than 105% of their home value.

"It hasn't worked, to be honest," said James Parrott, a top White House housing adviser, in a speech to industry executives this week. He said the housing market is at a "critical juncture" and policy decisions over the next six months could determine whether the economic headwinds are "going to be a blip or a broader struggle."

A separate question is whether banks will be able to handle the volume of mortgage applications.

Banks recently have laid off mortgage employees in anticipation of lower loan volumes, while shifting others to the backlog of delinquent loans. The reduced ability to handle loan volumes means that banks have charged higher rates relative to their borrowing costs, muting the decline in rates.

Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com

Can Record Low Mortgage Rates Help You?

Interest rates for fixed-rate mortgages are at all-time lows. But does it make sense to refinance? MarketWatch's Andrea Coombes outlines the pros and cons, including costs, appraisals and risks.

Six Steps That Could Boost Refinancing

By Nick Timiraos

Associated Press

The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are looking for ways to help more homeowners refinance.

Mortgage rates have dropped—again—to their lowest levels in the last 50 years. A Freddie Mac survey showed that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.12% this week, down from 4.22% last week.

But demand for new loans or refinancing remains muted, underscoring reasons why policy makers at the White House and Federal Reserve are thinking about new ways to help more homeowners refinance.

In Tuesday’s Outlook column, we looked at one of the great puzzles of the government’s initial response to the housing crisis: why few underwater borrowers have refinanced their loans through a White House program that was launched more than two years ago.

The Home Affordable Refinance Program allows underwater borrowers whose loans are backed by Fannie and Freddie to refinance. Under HARP, borrowers with loans worth 80% to 125% of the value of their house can refinance without putting down more cash or taking out mortgage insurance—those steps are often so costly that it no longer makes sense to refinance.

While 838,000 loans had refinanced under the program through June, fewer than 63,000 mortgages with loan-to-value ratios between 105% and 125% had refinanced. Fannie and Freddie guarantee millions of loans that are underwater.

The White House could take a number of steps to revamp the program, though many of these steps would require the blessing of Fannie and Freddie’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Here are six that policy makers would be likely to consider:

• Remove the eligibility date. Currently, loans that were originated after June 2009 aren’t eligible for HARP, and loans that have already refinanced once through HARP can’t be refinanced again.
• Eliminate the 125% loan-to-value cap. Nearly one in 13 loans backed by Fannie Mae can’t participate in the HARP program because they’re too far underwater. These loans weren’t eligible initially for HARP because they can’t be sold into standard pools of mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie and Freddie. Some analysts have suggested that the Federal Reserve could buy these loans as one way to facilitate the program.
• Waive risk-based fees that Fannie and Freddie charge. The firms charge lenders extra fees for riskier borrowers, which effectively raises the rate and reduces the incentive for underwater borrowers to refinance. “It wouldn’t be just a refinance boom for the pristine credits. It would open it up for middle America as well,” says Bob Walters, chief economist at Quicken Loans.
• Streamline the application process to tamp down closing costs. Eliminating appraisals, waiving title insurance requirements, and simplifying the refinance process could reduce fees that may have discouraged underwater borrowers from refinancing. (There’s much more on this in a paper by mortgage-market consultant Alan Boyce and Columbia Business School economists Glenn Hubbard and Christopher Mayer.)
• Address second mortgages and mortgage insurance. Using the HARP program for borrowers who are underwater has proven “extraordinarily difficult,” says Mr. Walters, because many borrowers have second mortgages or mortgage insurance from companies that must sign off on the new loan. Coming up with a way to gain automatic pre-approval from participating second-lien holders and mortgage insurers could accelerate underwater refinancing.
• Indemnify lenders against the potential for “put-backs.” This is a big one. Many banks have been reluctant to refinance borrowers under HARP, or are charging hefty fees, because of the concern that they’ll have to buy back the loan from Fannie and Freddie if it defaults.

Of course, any uptick in refinancing would come at the expense of bondholders, muting some of the economic boost. A working paper from the Congressional Budget Office provided some estimates around the benefits and costs of refinancing more borrowers.

Fixing one or two of these steps would help at the margins. Dealing with all of them would provide a bigger boost to refinancing. And all of them stop short of the “blanket refinance” that some analysts have proposed, where Fannie and Freddie would automatically refinance borrowers with an above-market rate, whether they ask for it or not.

“Mass refinance” programs aren’t as likely to happen because they threaten to create significant uncertainty for mortgage-bond investors. Officials may be reluctant to take steps that reward yesterday’s borrowers at the expense of tomorrow’s.

Follow Nick on Twitter: @NickTimiraos

Original Post: http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2011/09/08/six-steps-that-could-boost-refinancing/

What Did Fannie, Freddie Know?

By RUTH SIMON And NICK TIMIRAOS

The 17 lawsuits filed Friday by federal regulators against some of the world's biggest financial institutions hinge on a simple premise: The mortgage loans that banks packaged into securities often didn't meet the underwriting guidelines the banks outlined in their securities filings.


The lawsuits, filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, allege that the banks made untrue statements and omitted key facts when they sold mortgage investments to loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.


The suits involve $196 billion in mortgage bonds packaged by some of the world's biggest banks. In addition to the banks, the suits name more than 100 executives who signed offering statements for the securities. Several of the named banks denied the allegations, didn't respond to requests for comment or declined to comment.


The FHFA didn't specify how much it is seeking in damages.


Fannie and Freddie don't make loans directly, but they support housing markets by buying mortgages from banks and then selling them to investors as securities, providing guarantees to investors.
During the housing boom, the two companies augmented their role in the housing market by purchasing privately issued mortgage securities as investments.


It is those investments at issue in the suits. Analysts said the cases could ultimately turn on whether the FHFA can show that Fannie and Freddie, given all their expertise in evaluating mortgage risks, were misled about the quality of the loans backing those investments.


Citing detailed loan information, the FHFA lawsuits allege that the banks repeatedly misrepresented or made untrue statements about basic characteristics of loans in the securities, such as the portion of borrowers who lived in their homes and the percentage of the property's value being financed.


Banks "routinely" packaged loans into securities even though they had been flagged by third-party due diligence firms as not meeting underwriting guidelines, according to the lawsuits.


"It's a great myth that you can't defraud sophisticated financial parties," said William K. Black, a former bank regulator involved with hundreds of successful savings-and-loan-era prosecutions. "Models cannot protect you against fraudulent loans" or inadequate disclosures.


The FHFA's review of a sample of loans in one Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bond deal cited in a lawsuit found that the portion of properties that appeared not to be owner-occupied was nearly double the amount stated in the prospectus supplement.


Goldman Sachs declined to comment.


The banks are likely to argue that Fannie and Freddie knew that the loans were risky and that losses were due to underlying economic conditions, not faulty underwriting. "It will become clear that the plaintiffs knew as much as the defendants about the quality of these loan portfolios," says Andrew Sandler, co-chairman of BuckleySandler LLP, a law firm representing banks in litigation and regulatory enforcement actions.


Roughly a dozen investors and government agencies, including at least five federal home loan banks, American International Group Inc. and the National Credit Union Administration, have filed similar lawsuits.


Both the FHFA and NCUA have an edge over some other plaintiffs because they have subpoena power that has provided them with access to loan files.


Given that evidence from the loan files, "it would be amazing if these complaints do not survive motions to dismiss," said David Grais, an attorney in New York who represents several Federal Home Loan Banks in similar legal actions. Many of the other lawsuits are still in their early stages; most have survived motions to dismiss.


Write to Ruth Simon at ruth.simon@wsj.com and Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com