Breakdown of the Mortgage Supply Chain

However, hope might be on the horizon for the victims of the mortgage disaster of 2007/2008. Home buyers who were foreclosed upon years ago, or boomerang buyers, are beginning to be eligible to buy homes again. While some feel hope after feeling bamboozled by lenders and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some feel anxious and fearful of the thought of buying again. Yet there are lessons that have been learned by the mortgage meltdown. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provided a lesson for the

The foreclosure crisis is the second major financial dilemma of the twenty-first century. To solve this, the roots of the problem need to be dug up and exposed followed by replanting with an appropriately improved regulatory system to help build stronger roots for the future. It seems that the free market system can't be free anymore given its intertwining roots extend way beyond domestic to international financial systems. There are two fundamental causes to the latest credit crisis: 1) poor quality securitized mortgages and 2) insufficient underwriting for credit poor borrowers. Secondary (downstream) problems making the financial crisis more complex include underemployment and business failures. Many banks,

The world’s financial system was almost brought down in 2008 by the collapse of Lehman Brothers that was a major international investment bank at that time. The government sponsored these banks’ bailouts that were funded by tax money in order to restore the industry. Before the crisis, banks were lending irresponsible mortgages to subprime borrowers who had poor credit histories. These mortgages were purchased by banks and packaged into low-risk securities known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). CDOs were divided into tranches by its default risk. The ratings of those risks were determined by rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. However, those agencies were paid by banks and created an environment in which agencies were being generous to ratings since banks were their major clients.

The private label mortgage securitization collected a series of assets – most of them are high-yield junk bonds, mortgage securities, credit-default swap with varying degrees of risk. The securitization of subprime mortgages was attractive to investors due to high interest rates and high return features. More and more financial institutions started to sell private label mortgage securitization, including banks, insurance companies and so on. In 2006, the CDO market ranged from $0.5 trillion to $2 trillion (boundless. Com). Also, by 2007, about 70% of subprime borrowers used hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs).

Since mid 1990s, the subprime mortgage market has grown rapidly experiencing a phenomenal 23% compound annual growth rate to 2006. The total subprime loan originations increased from $65 billion in 1995 to $613 billion in 2006. The subprime sector has become a significant sub-sector of the total residential market accounting for 21% of all residential mortgage originations in 2006. Similarly, by year-end 2006, total outstanding balance of subprime loans grew to $1.2 trillion, approximately 12.6% of all outstanding mortgage debt.

The regulation that I have chosen for this paper is amendment in the Regulation X i.e. “Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act” and Regulation Z which is for “Truth in Lending”, for establishing the new disclosure requirements and forms in Regulation Z for the most closed-end consumer credit transactions secured by the real property. This regulation is controlled by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The role of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is to provide consumers information related to the terms of their agreements with financial companies during their application for a mortgage, choosing among credit cards, or using any number of other consumer financial products. The mortgage market is the single largest market for the consumer of financial products and the services in the United States, with approximately $10.4 trillion in loans outstanding. Since last decade, market went through an unprecedented cycle of the expansion and the contraction that was fuelled in the part by securitization of mortgages and the creation of increasingly sophisticated derivative products. This led to the collapse of financial system in 2008 and sparked the most severe recession in United States.

In the 1980s, investments banks such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley started selling mortgage bonds. Mortgage bonds were a collection of thousands of home mortgages, purchased from lenders, and their associated income streams (monthly payment). To address the fact that some homeowners often refinance their debt when interest rates are low which prematurely pays off the debt, mortgage bonds were stacked into layers called ‘tranches’. The lowest tranche represented mortgages to be paid off early, and the highest layer was the last mortgages to be paid off.

The recent mortgage crisis in the US was unprecedented. It led to a massive clampdown of financial institutions, occasioning one of the worst financial melt-downs the US has ever faced (Jaffe, 2008). Quite naturally, it would be necessary to examine the cause of the crisis in order to draft prophylactic measures that would prevent the same financial disaster in the future. This paper will discuss the events that led to the mortgage crisis.

The financial crisis emerged because of an excessive deregulation of business operation of financial institutions and of abusing the securitization mechanism in the absence of clearly defined rules to regulate this area in the American mortgage market (Krstić, Jemović, & Radojičić, 2013). Deregulation gives larger banks the opportunity to loosen underwriting lender guidelines and generate increase opportunity for homeownership (Kroszner & Strahan, 2013). After deregulation, banks utilized many versions of mortgage loans. Mortgage loans such as subprime and Alternative-A paper loans became available for borrowers challenged to find mortgage lenders before deregulation (Elbarouki, 2016; Palmer, 2015). The housing market has been severely affected by fluctuating interest rates and the requirement of large down payment (Follain, & Giertz, 2013). The subprime lending crisis has taken a toll on the nation’s economy since 2007. Individuals who lacked sufficient credit ratings or down payments resorted to subprime mortgages to finance their homes Defaults on subprime and other mortgages precipitated the foreclosure crisis, which contributed to the recent recession and national financial crisis (Odetunde, 2015). Subprime mortgages were appropriate for borrowers with substandard credit and Alternate-A paper loans were

The mortgage crisis we are experiencing in the United States today is already ranking as among the most serious economic events since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Hardly a day goes by without a story in the newspaper or on the cable news stations reporting about the increase in the number of foreclosures across the United States. The effects of this crisis have spread across all financial markets, where in the end all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis. When the housing market collapsed, so did the availability of credit which our economy depends upon. The home mortgage crisis, the financial crisis and overall economic crisis all need to address by the

It is necessary to first explain what Thomas Sowell an economics scholar says “The cast of characters” (Sowell 2). The nature of the housing market makeup is much more than just a bank issuing loans. The importance is to understand what lies behind the scene and from there comprehend the causes of the housing crisis. The Federal Reserve System in general regulates banks across the county. The Federal Reserve also has power to “take action which affect interest rates and the money supply” (Sowell 2). The Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation are “two government-created, but privately owned, profit-making enterprises that buy mortgages from banks” (Sowell 3). The Federal National Mortgage Association is also known as Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation is also known as Freddie Mac. These Associations as stated above buy loans from banks, which ultimately eliminates the banks wait for 30 years of monthly payments. According to book The Housing Boom and Bust “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased more than one-third of all the mortgages in the nation that were resold by the original lenders.” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is another major entity in the real estate housing market. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is also known as (HUD) and “exercises authority over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,

Mortgage regulations have changed significantly over the last few years. We have gone from restrictive guidelines with few options to the market and loan options opening back up.

In the early-2000s, Moody’s, one of the leading credit rating agencies in the world, evaluated thousands of bonds backed by so-called “subprime” residential mortgages—home loans made to those with both low incomes and poor credit scores. When housing prices began to fall in 2006, the value of these bonds disintegrated, and Moody’s was compelled to downgrade them significantly. In late 2008, several commercial banks, investment banks, and mortgage lenders that had been

In the new system, an investment banker buys the mortgage from the lender, borrowing millions of dollars to buy thousands of mortgages, and every month he gets payments from homeowners for each of the mortgages. The banker then consolidates all the mortgages and splits the final product into three sections: safe, okay, and risky mortgages, which make up a collateralized debt obligation (CDO). As homeowners pay their mortgages, money flows into each of the sections, with the safe filling first and the risky filling last, contributing to their respective names. Credit agencies stamp the top two safer mortgages with a triple A or triple B rating, which are then be sold to investors who want a safe mortgage, while the risky slice is sold to hedge funds who want a risky investment. The bankers make millions, pay back their loans, and investors also make a worthwhile investment. So pleased are the investors, however, that they want more. Unfortunately, back at the beginning of the cycle, the mortgage broker can no longer find qualified mortgagers

One of the first indications of the late 2000 financial crisis that led to downward spiral known as the “Recession” was the subprime mortgages; known as the “mortgage mess”. A few years earlier the substantial boom of the housing market led to the uprising of mortgage loans. Because interest rates were low, investors took advantage of the low rates to buy homes that they could in return ‘flip’ (reselling) and homeowners bought homes that they typically wouldn’t have been able to afford. High interest rates usually keep people from borrowing money because it limits the amount available to use for an investment. But the creation of the subprime mortgage