Zero-Down Loans Coming Back?

When the housing bubble burst, one of the culprits, economists agreed, was exotic mortgages, including those that required little or no money down.

But on a recent evening, Matthew and Hannah Middlebrooke stood in their new $115,000 three-bedroom ranch house here, which Mr. Middlebrooke bought in June with just $1,000 down.

Because he also received a grant to cover closing costs and insurance, the check he wrote at the closing was for 67 cents.

“I thought I’d be stuck renting for years,” said Mr. Middlebrooke, 26, who earns $32,000 a year as a producer for a Christian television ministry.

Although home foreclosures are again expected to top two million this year, Fannie Mae, the lending giant that required a government takeover, is creeping back into the market for mortgages with no down payment.

Mr. Middlebrooke’s mortgage came from a new program called Affordable Advantage, available to first-time home buyers in four states and created in conjunction with the states’ housing finance agencies. The program is expected to stay small, said Janis Smith, a spokeswoman for Fannie Mae.

Some experts are concerned about the revival of such mortgages.

“Loans that have zero down payment perform worse than loans with down payments,” said Mathew Scire, a director of the Government Accountability Office’s financial markets and community investment team. “And loans with down payment assistance” — like Mr. Middlebrooke’s — “perform worse than those that do not.”

But the surprise is the support these loans have received, even from critics of exotic mortgages, who say low down payments themselves were not the problem, except when combined with other risk factors like adjustable rates or lax underwriting.

Moreover, they say, the housing market needs such nontraditional lending, as long as it is done prudently.

“This is subprime lending done right,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an umbrella group for 600 community organizations, and a staunch critic of the lending industry. “If they had done subprime this way in the first place, we wouldn’t have these problems.”

At Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, Eric Belsky, the director, said the loans might be the type of step necessary to restart the housing market, because down payment requirements are keeping first-time home buyers out.

“If you look at where the market may get strength from, it may very well be from first-time buyers,” he said. “And a very significant constraint to first-time buyers is the wealth constraint.”

The loans are the idea of state housing finance agencies, or H.F.A.’s, quasi-government entities created to help moderate-income people buy their first homes.

Throughout the foreclosure crisis, the state agencies continued to make loans with low down payments, often to borrowers with tarnished credit, with much lower default rates than comparable mortgages from commercial lenders or the Federal Housing Administration. The reason: the agencies did not offer adjustable rates, and they continued to document buyers’ income and assets, which many commercial lenders did not do. In 2009, the agencies’ sources of revenue dried up, and they had to curtail most lending.

Then they created Affordable Advantage. The loans are 30-year fixed mortgages, with mandatory homeownership counseling, available to people with credit scores of 680 and above (720 in Massachusetts). The buyers have to put in $1,000 and must live in the homes.

All of these requirements ease the risk, said William Fitzpatrick, vice president and senior credit officer of Moody’s Investors Service. “These aren’t the loans that led us into the mortgage crisis,” he said.

So far Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Wisconsin are offering the loans. The Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority has issued 500 loans since March, making it the first state to act. After six months, there are no delinquencies so far, said Kate Venne, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The agencies buy the loans from lenders, then sell them as securities to Fannie Mae. Because the government now owns 80 percent of Fannie Mae, taxpayers are on the hook if the loans go bad.

The state agencies oversee the servicing of the loans and work with buyers if they fall behind — a mitigating factor, said Mr. Fitzpatrick of Moody’s.

“They have a mission to put people in homes and keep them in homes,” not to foreclose unless other options are exhausted, he said. The loans have interest rates about one-half of a percentage point above comparable loans that require down payments.

Ms. Smith, the spokeswoman for Fannie Mae, distinguished the program from loans of the boom years that “layered risk on top of risk.”

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Posted in: Housing Market
Tags: down payment assistance, fannie mae, first time home buyers, home foreclosures, housing bubble, national community reinvestment coalition, zero down payment

The expiration of the 2010 Home Buyer Tax Credits on April 30 is unlikely to put off Americans looking to purchase homes who believe now is a good time to buy and are confident that home prices will rise according to a survey released by Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services, Inc., a Prudential Financial, Inc. company. The survey of 1,000 Americans between the ages of 25-64 with at least $35,000 household income was conducted during April 15-20, 2010.

More than 90% of consumers believe that the home buyer tax credits have helped both first-time home buyers and the U.S. housing market overall. Among consumers actually shopping for homes, 65% believe that the end of the tax credits will have little or no effect on their interest in purchasing a home.

While consumers remain unsure about the direction of the housing market, the survey reveals that they are optimistic about real estate values with 46% of consumers expecting real estate prices in their area to increase over the next year. Just 12% expect prices will decline. Over the next five years, 79% expect real estate prices to increase, with 20% expecting prices to increase substantially.

“The survey underscores the key role the federal home buyer tax credits played in stimulating residential real estate market activity and the U.S. economy,” said James Mallozzi, chairman and chief executive officer of Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services, Inc. “It also shows that most consumers believe the market has hit bottom and are more optimistic about the future.”

Survey respondents identified concerns about rising mortgage interest rates and unemployment as the most important factors affecting their decision to purchase a home, along with more stringent lending criteria and fewer mortgage-backed securities purchased by the Federal Reserve. The expiration of the tax credits placed lowest on their list of concerns. Among those who have recently purchased a home, 61% cited low mortgage interest rates as “very important” to their decisions – an amount greater than either the tax credit or even cheaper prices. The 66% expecting interest rates to rise underscores potential headwinds for the market.

“The tax credits clearly helped stimulate the market when consumer confidence was low and housing inventory was high,” said Earl Lee, president, Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services, Inc. “While the tax credit expiration is a concern for many, the bigger issues now are the availability and cost of financing as well as if they will have a job.”

Despite the significant downturn in the real estate market, the survey underscores that the dream of homeownership and the perception that owning a home is a good investment remain intact. Among current renters, 75% still believe owning their home is a better long-term choice for their needs than renting.

The majority of consumers also believe that homeownership is a better investment than individual stocks or bonds (75%), mutual funds (72%), or savings accounts (74%).

“The real estate market is precariously balanced. Consumers are clearly motivated to take advantage of the opportunities the current low interest rates and prices afford,” Lee notes. “While the market is picking up in terms of sales and confidence, and the majority still believe that owning a home is a good investment, the outlook for the market remains highly dependent upon the direction of the economy overall.”

Posted in: Housing Market
Tags: first time home buyers, Housing Market, low mortgage, mortgage interest rates, real estate values, residential real estate, tax credits

Home sales in the Midwest jumped 58% in November 2009, the strongest showing of any region, as first-time buyers rushed to claim a temporary federal tax credit.

“I think it’s going to be a very good year this next year,” said Sedalia, Missouri real estate agent Mark Pohl. While the Sedalia area has been in a downhill market for about three years, Pohl believes that the area hit rock bottom in March 2009. Since March, there has been a slow increase in the number of homes sold in the area. “I think it’s progressively gotten better,” Pohl said.

The National Association of Realtors recently reported that there were 106,000 completed sales in the 11-state Midwest region and the median home price was flat at $140,800.

The tax credit deadline drove sales across most of the Midwest. “It got everybody moving,” said Don Godwin, owner of the Re/Max Real Estate Group in Des Moines. “First-time home buyers have probably been most of my business,” Pohl said.

Posted in: Housing Market
Tags: first time home buyers, midwest region, real estate agent