Friday, February 22, 2013

More Home Owners Have Equity Again

With home prices inching up, more Americans are emerging from being underwater — owing more on their mortgage than their home is currently worth.

Several reports have tried to estimate how many home owners came out from being underwater last year. CoreLogic reported that for the first nine months of 2012, about 1.4 million borrowers moved above water. Zillow recently estimated that 2 million home owners last year emerged from being underwater. And J.P. Morgan Securities reported that the number of underwater home owners fell from 11 million to 7 million last year.

“Estimates can vary for a number of reasons,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “Underwater borrowers can move back to positive equity by paying down their loan principal or by seeing prices rise. Properties can also ‘exit’ negative equity when they go through foreclosure or when the bank approves a short sale. In those cases, borrowers aren’t being returned to positive equity — instead, they simply cease to be borrowers.”

Many of the largest home gains across the country came in areas that had a high number of underwater borrowers. “If this correlation persists in the coming years, the underwater problem could fade much faster than implied by the speed of national house prices appreciation,” Goldman Sachs researchers told The Wall Street Journal.

Source: “Rising Prices Shrink Ranks of Underwater Borrowers,” The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 21, 2013)

Friday, February 1, 2013

Fannie, Freddie to Allow Walkaways in Some Cases

Underwater borrowers who have stayed current with their mortgage payments now may be able to give up their properties and get their debts erased, according to new guidelines issued by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Non-delinquent borrowers who have Fannie and Freddie-backed loans and who can document a hardship, such as an illness, job change, or other situation that requires they must move can apply for a deed-in-lieu transaction. Eligible borrowers also must have a 55 percent debt-to-income ratio. Servicers will be required to confirm that the property has been left in good condition.

Borrowers who are eligible will have the debt remaining between the property’s value and size of mortgage erased.

“The goal is to make sure people who have suffered a hardship have the appropriate options to prevent foreclosure,” says Andrew Wilson, spokesman for Fannie Mae.

Borrowers may still be required some repayment, however, if the borrower has the means to do so. “Home owners applying for deed-in-lieu transactions may be asked to make cash contributions of up to 20 percent of their financial reserves, excluding retirement accounts,” Bloomberg reports about the guidelines. “Or, they may be asked to sign a promissory note for future no-interest repayments. The amount and terms can be negotiated.”

Fannie and Freddie’s new eligibility for deed-in-lieu of transactions has been met with some criticism, particularly at a time with the government-sponsored enterprises are still underwater themselves from steep losses the last few years. The GSE’s have, to date, required $190 billion of taxpayer money since 2008.

“It’s an extraordinarily generous approach for companies still in debt to American taxpayers,” Phillip Swagel, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, told Bloomberg. “We’re giving people an incentive to walk away, right when the housing market is starting to right itself.”

But some argue that past programs tended to penalize borrowers on the brink of foreclosure who kept making their payments, says Julia Gordon, director of housing finance and policy at the Center for American Progress. Mortgage servicers in some cases were even advising borrowers to stop making their mortgage payment so that they could qualify for more assistance.

“Fannie and Freddie are finally recognizing that some people are stuck in their homes,” Gordon told Bloomberg. “There are a lot of families who need to move who can’t do it if they’re going to have debt hanging over their heads. There’s no winner when someone is forced to default on their mortgage -- not the investor, not the home owner, and certainly not the neighborhood.”

Source: “Fannie To Allow Walkaways by On-Time Borrowers: Mortgages,” Bloomberg (Jan. 28, 2013)