Mortgage Rescue Program & The New Scam – “Quick Defaults” – New/Modified Mortgages Defaulting Prior To 1st Payment, Reports FHA

Borrowers are flocking back to the FHA, which has become the only option for those who lack hefty down payments or stellar credit.

The agency’s share of the mortgage market is up from 2 percent three years ago to nearly a 33% of the mortgages now made, its highest level in at least two decades, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry trade publication. The FHA does not lend money directly. It provides mortgage insurance for borrowers working with FHA-approved lenders and uses the premiums to cover its losses.

At the same time, Congress has substantially increased the amount a homeowner can borrow on an FHA loan in pricey areas, thrusting the agency into markets it was previously shut out of, such as California, where plunging home prices have made people more vulnerable to foreclosure. Moreover, lawmakers last year put the FHA in charge of a program created to address the roots of the financial crisis by helping delinquent borrowers refinance into new mortgages.

The agency now faces this swell of loans that default almost immediately.

Under the FHA’s own rules, there’s a presumption of fraud or material misrepresentation if loans default after borrowers make no more than one payment. In those cases, the lenders are required by the FHA to investigate what went awry and notify the agency of any suspected fraud. But the agency’s efforts at pursuing abusive lenders have been hamstrung. Once, about 130 HUD investigators teamed with FBI agents in an FHA fraud unit, but this office was dismantled in 2003 after the FHA’s business dwindled in the housing boom.

At the same time, the FHA office responsible for approving and policing new lenders has not expanded even as the number of active lenders doing business with the FHA more than doubled to 2,300 in the past two years.

Although the FHA insures mortgages issued by lenders, it leaves these companies to conduct their own business. If a lender writes a lot of bad loans, that’s when the agency can eject it from the program. Experts in housing finance warn, however, that the FHA has inadequate staffing and technology to keep up.

With the surge in new loans, however, comes a new threat. Many borrowers are defaulting as quickly as they take out the loans. In the past year alone, the number of borrowers who failed to make more than a single payment before defaulting on FHA-backed mortgages has nearly tripled, far outpacing the agency’s overall growth in new loans, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal data.

Many industry experts attribute the jump in these instant defaults to lax scrutiny of prospective borrowers.

If a loan “is going into default immediately, it clearly suggests impropriety and fraudulent activity,” said Kenneth Donohue, the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which includes the FHA.

The spike in quick defaults follows the pattern that preceded the collapse of the subprime market as some of the same flawed lending practices that contributed to the mortgage crisis are now eroding one of the main federal agencies charged with addressing it. During the subprime lending boom, many mortgage brokers and small lenders milked the market for commissions and fees by making as many loans as possible with little regard for whether they could be repaid. [McAuleys World: Borrowers secured NINJA and Liar Loans - the underlying problem that resulted in our financial collapse has never been corrected]

Once again, thousands of borrowers are getting loans they do not stand a chance of repaying. Only now, unlike in the subprime meltdown, Congress would have to bail out the lenders if the FHA cannot make good on guarantees from its existing reserves. [Congress pays no taxes - The American Taxpayer will be called upon to "bailout the FHA]  More than 9,200 of the loans insured by the FHA in the past two years have gone into default after no or only one payment, according to the Post analysis. The pace of these instant defaults has tripled in one year. By last fall, more than two dozen FHA home loans on average were defaulting this way every day, seven days a week.

The overall default rate on FHA loans is accelerating rapidly as well but not as dramatically as that of instant defaults.

William Apgar, senior adviser to new HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, agreed that early defaults are a worrisome sign, “We have to make sure people don’t scam the system and when they do, they are held accountable,” Apgar said.

 

For those still looking to write loans in volume, the only game in town is government-backed mortgages, mostly those guaranteed by the FHA. But unlike with subprime business, lenders in the FHA program are asked to follow agency rules requiring borrowers to document their income, put up a modest down payment and commit to live in the homes.

“With the onslaught of FHA lending that’s going on right now, they’re bringing in lenders who are not familiar with FHA guidelines,” said David Hail, a vice president of Allied Home Mortgage of Houston, one of the nation’s largest FHA partners. He said the lenders are “under pressure from their builders or buyers to get these loans done. They’re approving loans that they should not be.”

 

 

The Palm Hill Condominiums project near West Palm Beach, Fla., exemplifies the problem. The two-story stucco apartments built 28 years ago on former Everglades swampland were converted to condominiums three years ago. The complex had the same owner as an FHA-approved mortgage company Great Country Mortgage of Coral Gables, whose brokers pushed no-money-down, no-closing-cost loans to prospective buyers of the condos, according to Michael Tanner, who is identified on a company Web site as a senior loan officer.

Many of the borrowers were first-time home buyers and were unable to keep up their payments. Tanner said he complained to his company that extending loans without any money down lured borrowers who either didn’t understand or take seriously the payments they’d have to make. Great Country’s owner, Hector Hernandez Jr., could not be reached for comment.

Eighty percent of the Great Country loans at the project have defaulted, a dozen after no payment or one. With 64 percent of all its loans gone bad, Great Country has the highest default rate of any FHA lender, according to the agency’s database. It also has the highest instant default rate. [Yet Great Country Mortgage is Still an FHA Lender - I wonder where Great Country's Political Contributions go]

In Reston, Access National Mortgage has watched its default rate climb. The lender is among a growing number that market FHA mortgages to borrowers through direct mail, telemarketing and the Internet. By the end of 2008, more than 5,200 of the agency’s defaults were on loans promoted with these techniques, a sevenfold increase in one year, accord to the review of federal data. [A single lender with 5,200 defaults in a single year - and the lender is still authorized to work with the FHA -  this simply doesn't pass the "smell test"]

Dean Hackemer, president of Access National Mortgage, noted that many of the lenders now running into trouble with FHA loans were previously selling subprime loans and related Alt-A mortgages, which required no documentation.

Refinanced Back Into Trouble

Among FHA loans with instant defaults, the upward trend is especially pronounced in refinanced deals. The number of refinancings that defaulted after zero payments or one have more than quadrupled since then end of 2007 and now represent two-fifths of all instant defaults.

The FHA is attractive to borrowers looking to refinance, in part because the agency allows for cash-out refinances, a practice Apgar called “particularly problematic.” It has become rare among conventional lenders, who fear that borrowers will take the cash and walk away from the loan.

The FHA also permits “streamlined” refinancing, in which established FHA borrowers get lower rates without verifying their income.

Karmen Carr, a housing finance consultant for the FHA, said some mortgage brokers have been known to game the system.

“The broker makes money on every transaction,” said Carr, a former executive at mortgage financier Freddie Mac. “They’re not going to turn away an application if they can get it through. There have been situations where people refinance and refinance to avoid making payments and the broker just keeps getting the fees. What do they care?”

 

 

For one homeowner in Spotsylvania, Va., it took only a month to fall behind on a new FHA-backed mortgage after she took it out in November 2007. The homeowner, a retired federal worker who asked not to be named because she’s embarrassed, said she soon refinanced into another FHA loan as a way of slightly delaying a subsequent payment. Then, she refinanced again. Now, she’s in default on that third loan, which she said requires two-thirds of her monthly income. Still, the mortgage pitches keep coming.

“The mortgage broker just called me again to say rates have fallen, do I want to refinance?” she said in an interview last month.

 

 

Some of the country’s largest and most established lenders are so concerned about this new threat to the credit market that they are not waiting for the FHA to tighten its requirements. Instead, they are imposing new rules on the brokers they work with. Wells Fargo and Bank of America, for instance, now require higher credit scores on certain FHA loan transactions and better on-time payment history. [Yet the Democrats ask "Why aren't the Banks Lending"? -  Is rejecting a bad credit risk an excuse or valid business decision?]

“We have some self-preservation methods,” said Joe Rogers, executive vice president at Wells Fargo.

These large lenders often buy home loans from smaller mortgage originators and in turn bundle them as securities, which they sell to investors. [Is a new generation of bad "paper" entering the Global investment community] When the loans go into foreclosure the FHA pays the lender for the bad loan. That can take more than a year in some states and may not fully compensate the lender. [If a lender makes a stupid loan - why shouldn't the lender pay the consequences. Taxpayers, not Congress "reimburses" the FHA. The FHA is fulfilling the same role as AIG in the first "Mortgage Crisis", propping up an investment scheme based on "bad mortgage paper"]

Some experts who track FHA lending say the agency should not wait for lenders to take the lead on toughening the rules, especially given the mortgage industry’s poor track record for policing subprime and other risky home loans.

“Even if the market eventually gets these guys, they shouldn’t have to wait for the market to do it,” said Brian Chappelle, a former FHA official who is now a banking industry consultant. “The most frequent question I get asked by the groups I talk to is: ‘Is FHA going to implode?’ . . . They haven’t seen HUD do anything significant in the past two years to tighten up its lending.”

[In order to initiate an economic recovery the Country needs to find a floor on Mortgage Values - Investors will not pruchase Mortgage Securities until they can have confidence that appropriate Mortgage underwriting has been completed. Housing "demand" or demand for "Mortgage Backed Investment Securities" (which is what really triggered the housing crisis) will not rebound until the corruption is removed from the system. Attempting to "bailout" a corrupt system is a recipe for disaster]  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/07/AR2009030702257.html?hpid=topnews 

 

Global Warming Myths Debunked – Great Lakes Freeze Over

Lake Superior is freezing over

7 03 2009

Lake Superior last froze over in 2003. It has now, again, frozen over. The frequency of freeze overs has historically been around once every 20 years. Now, in the last decade, we have seen two freeze overs.

The picture below is a beautiful satellite photo of Lake Superior from yesterday. With the well below freezing temperatures seen over the region Thursday night (-20 F), any isolated open water could have frozen.

The NWS in Marquette MI writes:

Due to the recent cold spell and below normal temperatures for much of the winter of 2008-2009, ice covers nearly all of Lake Superior. Only small areas of open water remain. This image was taken on Tuesday, March 3rd. If arctic air does not return in the next couple of weeks, it is likely that this will be the day of maximum ice cover on Lake Superior for this winter as warmer weather and periods of stronger winds through the end of this week will cause open water areas to expand. Click on the image to view a higher resolution satellite picture (image is large — just under 1mb).

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/07/lake-superior-is-freezing-over/

Lake Superior will freeze completely over approximately once in 20 years. When looking at past statistics ice coverage is measured in percentages. According to the Great Lakes Aquarium, Lake Superior froze over nearly 100 percent in 1996 96 percent in 1994 and about 95 percent in 1972. The last records of complete ice coverage on the big lake is 1979 and 1962.

http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/superior030603.htm

Published March 6, 2003

HOUGHTON, Mich. — Record-shattering cold temperatures threaten to freeze massive Lake Superior’s surface for the first time in more than two decades.

 

Great Lakes Freeze For First Time in More than a Decade

Three Great Lakes freeze over

 

 

A month of frigid weather leads to 24-inch icecap

Reuters News Service, March 12, 2003

TORONTO  Three of North Americas Great Lakes  Lake Huron, Lake Superior and Lake Erie  have frozen over for the first time in nearly a decade after icy weather lasting more than a month, experts at Environment Canada said on Tuesday.

A month of temperatures below minus 4 Fahrenheit has caused an ice blanket averaging as much as 24 inches on the lakes, creating problems for shipping companies and ferries.

“The large lakes freeze once every decade,” said John Falkingham, chief of forecast operations, at the Canadian Ice Service, which is part of Environment Canada. “A sustained long, cold spell causes such an extensive ice cover.”

MINUS 13 DEGREES

That frigid weather continued into March. Last week, the temperature fell below minus 13 Fahrenheit in southern Ontario, the coldest March in a century, according to Environment Canada.

The cold weather has affected the St. Lawrence Seaway, which will now open on March 31, almost a week behind schedule, said Ivan Lantz, director of marine operations for the Shipping Federation of Canada, an organization of ship owners and agents involved in the overseas trade.

“My estimate is that before the 15th of April, shipping is going to be very difficult,” Lantz said.    http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=4240&method=full

 

Global Warming? – The Boston Globe Reviews The Most Recent Scientific Data

JEFF JACOBY
Where’s the global warming?
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | March 8, 2009

SUPPOSE the climate landscape in recent weeks looked something like this:

Half the country was experiencing its mildest winter in years, with no sign of snow in many Northern states. Most of the Great Lakes were ice-free. Not a single Canadian province had had a white Christmas. There was a new study discussing a mysterious surge in global temperatures – a warming trend more intense than computer models had predicted. Other scientists admitted that, because of a bug in satellite sensors, they had been vastly overestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice.

If all that were happening on the climate-change front, do you think you’d be hearing about it on the news? Seeing it on Page 1 of your daily paper? Would politicians be exclaiming that global warming was even more of a crisis than they’d thought? Would environmentalists be skewering global-warming “deniers” for clinging to their skepticism despite the growing case against it?

No doubt.

But it isn’t such hints of a planetary warming trend that have been piling up in profusion lately. Just the opposite.

The United States has shivered through an unusually severe winter, with snow falling in such unlikely destinations as New Orleans, Las Vegas, Alabama, and Georgia. On Dec. 25, every Canadian province woke up to a white Christmas, something that hadn’t happened in 37 years. Earlier this year, Europe was gripped by such a killing cold wave that trains were shut down in the French Riviera and chimpanzees in the Rome Zoo had to be plied with hot tea. Last week, satellite data showed three of the Great Lakes – Erie, Superior, and Huron – almost completely frozen over. In Washington, D.C., what was supposed to be a massive rally against global warming was upstaged by the heaviest snowfall of the season, which paralyzed the capital.

Meanwhile, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has acknowledged that due to a satellite sensor malfunction, it had been underestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles – an area the size of Spain. In a new study, University of Wisconsin researchers Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis conclude that global warming could be going into a decades-long remission. The current global cooling “is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Swanson told Discovery News. Yes, global cooling: 2008 was the coolest year of the past decade – global temperatures have not exceeded the record high measured in 1998, notwithstanding the carbon-dioxide that human beings continue to pump into the atmosphere.

Considering how much attention would have been lavished on a comparable run of hot weather or on a warming trend that was plainly accelerating, shouldn’t the recent cold phenomena and the absence of any global warming during the past 10 years be getting a little more notice? Isn’t it possible that the most apocalyptic voices of global-warming alarmism might not be the only ones worth listening to?

There is no shame in conceding that science still has a long way to go before it fully understands the immense complexity of the Earth’s ever-changing climate(s). It would be shameful not to concede it. The climate models on which so much global-warming alarmism rests “do not begin to describe the real world that we live in,” says Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist and futurist. “The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand.”

But for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. When Al Gore insisted yet again at a conference last Thursday that there can be no debate about global warming, he was speaking not with the authority of a man of science, but with the closed-minded dogmatism of a religious zealot. Dogma and zealotry have their virtues, no doubt. But if we want to understand where global warming has gone, those aren’t the tools we need.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/03/08/wheres_global_warming/

George Will Debunks Global Warming

George Will Q&A on his recent column

8 03 2009

Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review decided to ask George Will a few questions about his recent column. I respect Steigerwald, precisely because he goes to the trouble of calling up people and asking questions directly. As many WUWT readers know, Will was recently villified for his column and for his printing of his interpretation on arctic sea ice. in particular. The excerpt below gives a window into Will’s thinking. – Anthony

Will on warming: The cold facts

By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 7, 2009

After George F. Will wrote a column last month questioning the faulty premises and apocalyptic predictions of global-warming alarmists, he caught holy heck from America’s “eco-pessimists.” He and his editors at The Washington Post were blasted with thousands of angry e-mails, most of which challenged Will’s assertion that global sea ice levels have not been dramatically reduced by man-made global warming, as environmentalists claim, but are essentially the same as they were in 1979. Will, who had used data from the Arctic Climate Research Center as his source, also was accused of multiple inaccuracies by The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin. Will wrote a second column defending his data and returning fire at Revkin.

All is calm now and Will is getting ready for the start of his favorite season — baseball season. I talked to him by phone on Thursday from his office in Washington.

• Q: You have felt the righteous wrath of those who believe in man-made global warming. Are you still all there?
• A: Oh, heavens. Yeah. The odd thing about these people is, normally when I write something that people disagree with they write letters to the editor or they write a responding op-ed piece. These people simply set out to try and get my editors to not publish my columns. Now I don’t blame them, because I think if my arguments were as shaky as theirs are, I wouldn’t want to engage in argument either.
• Q: The big issue was about how much global sea ice there is now compared to 1979.
• A: And that of course was a tiny portion of the column. The critics completely ignored — as again, understandably — the evidence I gave of the global cooling hysteria of 30 years ago.
• Q: They like to pretend that there really wasn’t any hysteria back then.
• A: Since I quoted the hysteria, it’s a little hard for them to deny it.
• Q: What disturbs you most about this global warming consensus that seems to be pretty widespread and doesn’t seem to be eroding?
• A: Well, I think it is eroding, in the sense that people sign on to be alarmed because it’s socially responsible … (and because it makes them feel good). But once they get to the price tag, once they are asked to do something about it, like pay trillions of dollars, they begin to re-think.

I’ve never seen anything quite like this in my now 40 years in Washington. I’ve never seen anything like the enlistment of the mainstream media in a political crusade — and this is a political crusade, because it’s about how we should be governed and how we should live; those are the great questions of politics. It is clearly for some people a surrogate religion. It’s a spiritual quest. It offers redemption. But what it also always offers, whether it is global cooling or global warming, is a rationale for the government to radically increase its supervision of our life and our choices. Whether the globe is cooling, whether it’s warming, the government’s going to be the winner and the governing class will be the winner.

Read the entire column at the Pittsburg Tribune-Review

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/08/george-will-qa-on-his-recent-column/#more-6083