Since Blogger is forever, I don't want to get rid of this blog, but we have long since moved on to greener pastures, first at www.lehilender.com, and now at www.lehimortgages.com. We very much hope you'll come visit us there.
Blessings on your head.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Bail Me Out
Okay, so everyone's asking what I think of the bailout. Let me get this on the record: I don't know. The fact is, nobody knows. That's one really, really good reason to vote "no".
Most people are a lot like me; they don't really know what the bailout contains, so they're generally opposed to it because this is not what government is supposed to be doing (or, alternatively, this IS what government is supposed to be doing, but it should be doing it for ME, and not for other people, depending on your home base on the political spectrum). But they also recognize that something is very, very wrong with the world financial system, and the only people that seem interested or capable of doing something about it are the people in Congress. So we'd like to see something happen, and sooner rather than later.
Several comments need to be made here:
1. It's silly, and I mean really silly, to blame Republicans for the bailout not passing. If you're Speaker of the House, you have to get more than 60% of your own party on board. No, the GOP isn't helping you, or the President, who is supposed to be a member of their party. Guess what? Right now he's ideologically closer to you than to them, Nancy, a point which I guarantee you won't be emphasizing in the next 5 weeks.
2. Early reaction is that the Republicans are going to catch it for voting this thing down. Nah. There are two reasons this is incorrect: one, the fact is that most of the nation, and by far the majority of people likely to be voting in November, were not supporting this bill, and two, something is finally going to get passed, and if it's even marginally better than what failed, the GOP comes off looking like Horatio at the Bridge. This will not be good for the Democrats.
3. There is a lot being made of how this bill would cost taxpayers $700 billion. This is just silly. It wouldn't cost even close to that much. [note: I am not saying this to support the bailout. I am saying it because it is true. I don't like winning arguments using bad facts or bad logic, even if I can win that way. There are reasons not to vote for the bailout, but this isn't one of them.] The government would be buying assets (at least some of what they spend will buy straight mortgages, for instance), and those assets have value. In fact, they almost certainly have greater value than their cost. I predict that if the bailout finally passes, that the government will eventually turn a substantial profit on the deal. This is actually worse than if the government lost money, and I'll elaborate below.
4. There is at least one plan I have heard that makes much more sense (I think) than what was voted down on Monday. That plan would still authorize the expenditure of hundreds of billions, but would require that those billions be spent exclusively on the whole mortgage notes being held by banks, and not on the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs)those mortgages ostensibly back, much less other debt that banks are holding. This does several positive things, in my opinion. First, it allows the government to demonstrably spend our money on things with real value. Not 100% of face value, I grant this, but some value. Even houses in downtown Detroit or suburban Cleveland have some value. The mortgages can be bought cheap and the value maximized by, second, negotiating the terms of the note with the homeowner when he's in default, to allow him to stay in the house. In a rising market, foreclosure is a good option for recovery of value. In a declining market, it sucks. It not only loses immediate value on the note itself, but it exacerbates the decline of property value across the board, further harming the asset value of your other mortgages. The government has been yammering at mortgage servicers to undertake this negotiative process; this plan would allow the government to just do it themselves. Second sub a, it would put shims under dropping property values by reducing foreclosures. Third, it would pour liquid cash into banks, which is desperately needed, and fourth, it would put a floor under the CDOs, because the bad mortgages that have destroyed their value would now be backstopped by the government. Those notes would therefore begin to trade again, and the machine would re-start.
This plan, I suspect, has no possible chance of being enacted. It would still have two bad effects; one, it would give government a huge windfall if it did its job properly and two, it still isn't what government should be doing with taxpayer money. But since it is going to do something with it, this seems the least harmful in the long run.
5. When the government makes money on an investment, it spend it on some pet project it couldn't get taxpayers to back. This is true at every level of government. Did you know that the Chrysler bailout in the 80s produced a $500 million windfall? No? YOu don't remember getting a check for your share? Darn right you don't. And if the government succeeds in getting this bailout to pass, and if it works, the government will get a profit that will dwarf the Chrysler windfall and make Exxon-Mobil look like a kid's lemonade stand. If the government gets these assets at .20 on the dollar, which seems likely, and they are worth .45 on the dollar, which, if the bailout is successful, also seems likely, the government will make a trillion-dollar profit. That money will not be paid out to you and me. It will instead be used to fund all the pet projects Congress can't get popular support for, like, most certainly, universal health care, among many many others. It will also lead Congress to believe that other intervention in other markets can have the same effect, and what you will get is socialism on a grand scale and the destruction of the free world. I do, in fact, predict that this is what will happen.
6. Europe is supposed to be immune to this cycle of crash and boom, because of its superior controls (read: socialism) provided by the government. Haha. Watch the news. The problems in Europe are worse, and they have no way to fight them. The EuroFed is only supposed to keep inflation in check, and has no mandate to stabilize markets. Oh, inflation is in check all right. It usually is when you have rising unemployment. The EU needs a bailout package as badly as we do, but they don't have any mechanism for getting one.
7. From a free-market perspective, the best thing to do is nothing at all, or to repeal some of the stupid regulations that contributed mightily to the current crisis. If the government will stop "rescuing" some things and not rescuing others, so that everyone knows they have to win or lose by these rules that exist right now, things will get worse very fast and better starting fairly shortly. I will lose my business, but I'm volunteering to do that if it will help convince the government to force the market to deal with its own problems. I'm not advocating some nebulous "hard time" for others; this would be my own financial ruin, despite my not having contributed in any way to the crisis. But it's the right thing and the best thing.
Instead, what we'll do is keep the comatose patient alive until all the organs fail at once and we have global meltdown and blood in the streets.
8. This brings me to the religious portion of this post, which you may skip if you don't care for that sort of thing. We know that this kind of financial meltdown is going to happen eventually. Most of us will have no idea it's happening until it's too late, which is why we are advised to be ready at all times. As the canary in the coalmine, so to speak, let me say that I do not think that this is the "big one". I think this is a head fake. It is a very clear, very obvious, somewhat painful warning that God is not kidding around when He tells us to be ready. But it is not going to be the beginning of the end. It is, however, the beginning of the beginning of the end. It is the day and a night and a day with no darkness. Right now, it's really obvious that the warnings we've been given to prepare are serious, but the signs will fade and things will go back to "normal", and we will forget, and the shock will be somewhat complete when, a few years from now, we get the three days of darkness and the tempests and the floods and the earthquakes. DO NOT FORGET. No matter what semblance of "normalcy" we get from whatever bailout passes, we must not forget. Get out of debt. Get food and water stored up. Lean on Christ and come to know Him well. Get close to the Spirit and listen to his voice. We have been warned.
And that's it for the longest post of my career. Let the comment wars begin.
Most people are a lot like me; they don't really know what the bailout contains, so they're generally opposed to it because this is not what government is supposed to be doing (or, alternatively, this IS what government is supposed to be doing, but it should be doing it for ME, and not for other people, depending on your home base on the political spectrum). But they also recognize that something is very, very wrong with the world financial system, and the only people that seem interested or capable of doing something about it are the people in Congress. So we'd like to see something happen, and sooner rather than later.
Several comments need to be made here:
1. It's silly, and I mean really silly, to blame Republicans for the bailout not passing. If you're Speaker of the House, you have to get more than 60% of your own party on board. No, the GOP isn't helping you, or the President, who is supposed to be a member of their party. Guess what? Right now he's ideologically closer to you than to them, Nancy, a point which I guarantee you won't be emphasizing in the next 5 weeks.
2. Early reaction is that the Republicans are going to catch it for voting this thing down. Nah. There are two reasons this is incorrect: one, the fact is that most of the nation, and by far the majority of people likely to be voting in November, were not supporting this bill, and two, something is finally going to get passed, and if it's even marginally better than what failed, the GOP comes off looking like Horatio at the Bridge. This will not be good for the Democrats.
3. There is a lot being made of how this bill would cost taxpayers $700 billion. This is just silly. It wouldn't cost even close to that much. [note: I am not saying this to support the bailout. I am saying it because it is true. I don't like winning arguments using bad facts or bad logic, even if I can win that way. There are reasons not to vote for the bailout, but this isn't one of them.] The government would be buying assets (at least some of what they spend will buy straight mortgages, for instance), and those assets have value. In fact, they almost certainly have greater value than their cost. I predict that if the bailout finally passes, that the government will eventually turn a substantial profit on the deal. This is actually worse than if the government lost money, and I'll elaborate below.
4. There is at least one plan I have heard that makes much more sense (I think) than what was voted down on Monday. That plan would still authorize the expenditure of hundreds of billions, but would require that those billions be spent exclusively on the whole mortgage notes being held by banks, and not on the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs)those mortgages ostensibly back, much less other debt that banks are holding. This does several positive things, in my opinion. First, it allows the government to demonstrably spend our money on things with real value. Not 100% of face value, I grant this, but some value. Even houses in downtown Detroit or suburban Cleveland have some value. The mortgages can be bought cheap and the value maximized by, second, negotiating the terms of the note with the homeowner when he's in default, to allow him to stay in the house. In a rising market, foreclosure is a good option for recovery of value. In a declining market, it sucks. It not only loses immediate value on the note itself, but it exacerbates the decline of property value across the board, further harming the asset value of your other mortgages. The government has been yammering at mortgage servicers to undertake this negotiative process; this plan would allow the government to just do it themselves. Second sub a, it would put shims under dropping property values by reducing foreclosures. Third, it would pour liquid cash into banks, which is desperately needed, and fourth, it would put a floor under the CDOs, because the bad mortgages that have destroyed their value would now be backstopped by the government. Those notes would therefore begin to trade again, and the machine would re-start.
This plan, I suspect, has no possible chance of being enacted. It would still have two bad effects; one, it would give government a huge windfall if it did its job properly and two, it still isn't what government should be doing with taxpayer money. But since it is going to do something with it, this seems the least harmful in the long run.
5. When the government makes money on an investment, it spend it on some pet project it couldn't get taxpayers to back. This is true at every level of government. Did you know that the Chrysler bailout in the 80s produced a $500 million windfall? No? YOu don't remember getting a check for your share? Darn right you don't. And if the government succeeds in getting this bailout to pass, and if it works, the government will get a profit that will dwarf the Chrysler windfall and make Exxon-Mobil look like a kid's lemonade stand. If the government gets these assets at .20 on the dollar, which seems likely, and they are worth .45 on the dollar, which, if the bailout is successful, also seems likely, the government will make a trillion-dollar profit. That money will not be paid out to you and me. It will instead be used to fund all the pet projects Congress can't get popular support for, like, most certainly, universal health care, among many many others. It will also lead Congress to believe that other intervention in other markets can have the same effect, and what you will get is socialism on a grand scale and the destruction of the free world. I do, in fact, predict that this is what will happen.
6. Europe is supposed to be immune to this cycle of crash and boom, because of its superior controls (read: socialism) provided by the government. Haha. Watch the news. The problems in Europe are worse, and they have no way to fight them. The EuroFed is only supposed to keep inflation in check, and has no mandate to stabilize markets. Oh, inflation is in check all right. It usually is when you have rising unemployment. The EU needs a bailout package as badly as we do, but they don't have any mechanism for getting one.
7. From a free-market perspective, the best thing to do is nothing at all, or to repeal some of the stupid regulations that contributed mightily to the current crisis. If the government will stop "rescuing" some things and not rescuing others, so that everyone knows they have to win or lose by these rules that exist right now, things will get worse very fast and better starting fairly shortly. I will lose my business, but I'm volunteering to do that if it will help convince the government to force the market to deal with its own problems. I'm not advocating some nebulous "hard time" for others; this would be my own financial ruin, despite my not having contributed in any way to the crisis. But it's the right thing and the best thing.
Instead, what we'll do is keep the comatose patient alive until all the organs fail at once and we have global meltdown and blood in the streets.
8. This brings me to the religious portion of this post, which you may skip if you don't care for that sort of thing. We know that this kind of financial meltdown is going to happen eventually. Most of us will have no idea it's happening until it's too late, which is why we are advised to be ready at all times. As the canary in the coalmine, so to speak, let me say that I do not think that this is the "big one". I think this is a head fake. It is a very clear, very obvious, somewhat painful warning that God is not kidding around when He tells us to be ready. But it is not going to be the beginning of the end. It is, however, the beginning of the beginning of the end. It is the day and a night and a day with no darkness. Right now, it's really obvious that the warnings we've been given to prepare are serious, but the signs will fade and things will go back to "normal", and we will forget, and the shock will be somewhat complete when, a few years from now, we get the three days of darkness and the tempests and the floods and the earthquakes. DO NOT FORGET. No matter what semblance of "normalcy" we get from whatever bailout passes, we must not forget. Get out of debt. Get food and water stored up. Lean on Christ and come to know Him well. Get close to the Spirit and listen to his voice. We have been warned.
And that's it for the longest post of my career. Let the comment wars begin.
Friday, July 25, 2008
End of a Wild Week
- Consumer sentiment comes in higher than expected. Durable
goods orders come in higher than expected. NEW HOME SALES come in
better than expected. - Today is a victory for low expectations, much more than a sign of
recovering economy, but still, stocks are benefitting and bonds getting
beat up. We had had a little rally, but we're losing ground today. - Of note: FHA conventional-to-FHA refinances have been put into
the FHA Secure program, which was originally designed to allow
delinquent homeowners to get out of their ARMs before they lose their
homes. Obviously - OBVIOUSLY - lumping these two kinds of loans
together is silly, as it takes good loans from responsible homeowners
and prices them the same as risky loans to those missing payments.
This costs good borrowers, no matter how good their credit, about .5%
to their rate when refinancing to FHA.
- There is, however, an exception, and it comes from Countrywide,
of all people. That company has decided that it will not buy FHA
Secure loans except when the homeowner has never been delinquent.
Therefore they do not have to lump risky and good loans together,
therefore they can offer better pricing, and it is that pricing that is
reflected in the chart above. - Never thought I'd say it, but Countrywide is acting very smart. And it's a good thing for us.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
At Least Oil Is Down Too
- Bonds rallied yesterday a little, but have given back all that
momentum and more today, so we're back to where we were Friday on
rates. At least oil is falling - we're more than $18 off the high and
still going.
- There is a proposal out there being put together by a
private/public consortium of mortgage people and government regulators
that actually has some merit. It will be a couple of months before we
get the full details, but right now it appears that what we're looking
at is a plan to increase transparency in the packaging of mortgage
loans so they can be purchased. This would add confidence to the
secondary mortgage market, increase liquidity, and probably drive down
rates, especially for good borrowers. - This is the technical part, so skip it if you don't care:
mortgages are packaged in large groups for sale on the secondary
market. Primary lenders have used this packaging to shed loans from
the books and obtain new lending capital. However, up to the moment,
the packages of loans have been fairly opaque; that is, the secondary
financiers were never quite sure what it is they were buying. The
packages of securitized loans were often significantly heterogeneous,
and as the market has melted down, that has contributed to the
distress, because the lending institutions that purchased these
packages couldn't really tell what they were worth - they didn't know.
- Some of the loans were fine, most of them, even, but many were
not. How many? Nobody knew. Was this package better or worse than
that one? Nobody knew. How much real exposure did the financier have
to market downturn? Nobody knew. - To a large extent, nobody knows now, either, which is why the
recent spate of better-than expected earnings from servicing banks has
been such welcome news. At least we're pretty sure the entire
portfolio isn't going to self-destruct. - This opacity does two things: one, it increases risk-based
pricing for good loans (20%+ equity, 720 credit, full income
documentation) while significantly decreasing pricing for bad loans,
and two, it allows lenders to make riskier loans, because they can then
package them with good ones and sell the whole shooting match as "A"
credit mortgages. - You're right, this is stupid.
- What this proposal would do, then, is make it much easier for an
investor to tell what he was buying, because all the loans in any given
package would share characteristics. This will increase liquidity,
especially for good borrowers, and get some money moving in the
mortgage market again. Rates will fall for less risky loans. - Rates will, of course, rise for more risky ones, which will
emphasize things that need emphasizing, like having a job and some
money in the bank, and a history of paying bills on time. That will be
painful for some, but better on the whole for everyone. - Congress will then step in and prohibit risk-based pricing as
being discriminatory, and the entire market will collapse. But we will
have made a good try, and that's important.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
FHA Guideline Changes
Rates today are the same as yesterday.
What I want to take a minute to do is acquaint you with some of the new
rules for FHA loans that will be effective August 1. These are
critical to many borrowers, as FHA loans are currently substantially
better both in interest rate and in underwriting flexibility than
conventional financing.
Previously:
No loans approved less than 2 years from bankruptcy.
As of August 1:
No loans approved less than 4 years from bankruptcy, unless significant extenuating circumstances can be proved.
Previously:
No loans approved less than 3 years from foreclosure
As of August 1:
No loans approved less than 7 years from foreclosure
Previously:
Rental income allowed to offset liability for residence being converted to investment property (when purchasing a new home)
As of August 1:
Rental income disallowed on conversion to investment, unless 30% equity in the property.
There are more in the same vein. Please be aware of these changes.
Additionally, FHA is changing LTV requirements, cashout requirements
and reserve requirements for most loans, and altering the up-front
mortgage insurance premium required, although in this case, it is true
that many borrowers will now pay less than they otherwise would have.
So it's not all bad news.
Stay tuned for more. And as always, call with questions (801-310-3407)
or hit reply and we can get you the information you need.
Cj
What I want to take a minute to do is acquaint you with some of the new
rules for FHA loans that will be effective August 1. These are
critical to many borrowers, as FHA loans are currently substantially
better both in interest rate and in underwriting flexibility than
conventional financing.
Previously:
No loans approved less than 2 years from bankruptcy.
As of August 1:
No loans approved less than 4 years from bankruptcy, unless significant extenuating circumstances can be proved.
Previously:
No loans approved less than 3 years from foreclosure
As of August 1:
No loans approved less than 7 years from foreclosure
Previously:
Rental income allowed to offset liability for residence being converted to investment property (when purchasing a new home)
As of August 1:
Rental income disallowed on conversion to investment, unless 30% equity in the property.
There are more in the same vein. Please be aware of these changes.
Additionally, FHA is changing LTV requirements, cashout requirements
and reserve requirements for most loans, and altering the up-front
mortgage insurance premium required, although in this case, it is true
that many borrowers will now pay less than they otherwise would have.
So it's not all bad news.
Stay tuned for more. And as always, call with questions (801-310-3407)
or hit reply and we can get you the information you need.
Cj
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Extra! Extra!
You Read It Here First
Cj
www.thechrisjonesgroup.com
- Oil has lost over $8 the last two days. If the runup in crude
oil prices is, as has been contended often, mostly driven by
speculators and hysteria, let's all remember that hysteria works in
both directions. On the upside, it's called "irrational exuberance".
On the downside, it's called panic. - All commodities, actually, are down rather significantly from
their highs, including precious metals and even corn and wheat. It
appears that our capacity to grow things, find things, and innovate out
of needing things is, in fact, expanding. Shocker. - Bonds are up, the stock market is down, and despite FNMA and
FHLMC writing off another $42 billion in bad debt yesterday, both those
stocks are up this morning and there isn't any apparent worry that the
backbone of the mortgage system will collapse any time soon. - Fact is, the vast majority of homeowners will pay their bills on
time and repay their mortgages on schedule. There's a lot of hysteria
out there in the credit markets, but there are still good loans to be
had, and lots of good people that need them. Lenders need to add
really good loans to their portfolios, and are keeping rates relatively
low to attract them. - Here's the prediction: the sky is not falling. Oil will not hit
$150 a barrel this year. Gas will not reach $5 a gallon this year, or
next year. Mortgage rates will not hit 7% this year or next year. By
spring of next year there will be a significant, noticeable rally in
real estate. The world financial system will not collapse. Innovation
will explode. - You read it here first.
Cj
www.thechrisjonesgroup.com
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Fed Holds Firm
- The Federal Reserve tried to have it both ways yesterday, leaving
short-term rates right where they were, but talking about getting tough
with inflation. That leaves the Fed rate at 2%, making the Prime Rate
6%. As you know, because you are a faithful reader, Fed Rates and
long-term mortgage rates do not have that much to do with one another. - The long bond traders hated the news initially, but the stock
traders hated it even more and by the end of the day we were back flat
and repricing to the better. - So this morning we have the first tick down in certain rates we've seen in a month.
- National Association of Realtors data this morning shows a 2%
increase in month-to-month sales volume for houses, most of that in the
markets like Vegas and the coasts, where house prices have dropped
significantly. But again, it's a sign of increasing activity. - My take? We're on the housing bottom. There will not be
significant national drops in home prices from here. It's not going to
get worse than it is. It is, however, going to stay bad for another
nine months, so there's a significant buying window here. Not that I'm
a real estate expert, mind you.
Same recommendation today, if you're going to buy, buy. Don't
try to time the market. It's a fool's game.
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