Essay on Subprime Lending

The mortgage crisis of 2007 marked catastrophe for millions of homeowners who suffered from foreclosure and short sales. Most of the problems involving the foreclosing of families’ homes could boil down to risky borrowing and lending. Lenders were pushed to ensure families would be eligible for a loan, when in previous years the same families would have been deemed too high-risk to obtain any kind of loan. With the increase in high-risk families obtaining loans, there was a huge increase in home buyers and subsequently a rapid increase in home prices. As a result, prices peaked and then began falling just as fast as they rose. Soon after families began to default on their mortgages forcing them either into foreclosure or short sales. Who was to blame for the risky lending and borrowing that caused the mortgage meltdown? Many might blame the company Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but in reality the entire system of buying and selling and free market failed home owners and the housing economy.

This power helped white families considerably in gaining ownership of houses, but severely crippled home ownership ability for African American families. The role of the HOLC was to provide low interest loans and refinance homes to prevent foreclosure; the role of the FHA was to guarantee mortgages from default. Both of these organizations worked to minimize the risk of home loans for banks, making it easier for families to obtain loans and mortgages to buy homes. This resulted in an explosion of home ownership from the 1930’s to the 1960’s, “In 1930, only 30 percent of Americans owned their homes; by 1960, more than 60 percent were home owners.”

In 1934, Congress created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to assist citizens with their housing needs. According to “Department of Housing and Urban Development” on Allgov.com, “In July 1947, the Housing and Home Finance Agency was established to help people buy homes following World War II. Two years later, the Housing Act of 1949 was enacted to help eradicate slums and promote redevelopment in urban areas.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development Act began with the Housing Act of 1949. According to The Department of Housing and Urban Development written by John B. Willmann, “The Act of 1949 added new prestige to the Housing and Home Finance Agency by authorizing broader public housing activity.” The Housing Act of 1949 also promoted urban redevelopment and research on housing and development problems.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is a United States federal department that administers programs dealing with better housing and urban renewal since 1965. HUD issued a draft to change the

Mortgage Insurance Companies: Mortgage insurance companies are generally used if the borrowers down payment are less than twenty percent of the purchase price of the home. This is called PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance). The cost of private mortgage insurance is included in a buyer’s monthly payment.

The Federal Government needs to make sure to enforce strict guidelines on who can and cannot be accepted for a home loan, and not allow big investors to borrow excessive money at low interest rates to inflate the investor’s financial advantage. If the government starts allowing lower standards on mortgages, we are going to end up in the same catastrophe once again. In an article written by U.S. News and World Reports entitled Should the Federal Government Provide Support to the Mortgage Market?, the Federal government and the President attempted to get involved with the housing market. The passage implicated that Obama wanted to do away with federally funded conglomerates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and implement another type of government assisted program ("Should the Federal Government"). The program would prevent the mistakes made by Fannie and Freddie which created the original “housing bubble burst” ("Should the Federal Government"). One of the Senate bills suggests the government create “a new agency, the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corporation to replace Fannie and Freddie” ("Should the Federal

One of the most prominent aspect of the Great Depression was that the people of United States lost confidence in the banking system and the banking crises of the 1933 followed. Until 1930s, unregulated banking system existed with the notion that increased competition would make the market more efficient increasing the consumer choice base and thus would promote resource allocation and growth. Since people at that time weren’t too supportive of centralization, there was division of power and all the states and regions had their own banks to mobilize resources and carry out investments. This led to increasing competition to attract the same resources which escalated the rates offered to depositors and induced lenders to invest in high return, high risk areas. As a result, the financial system became fragile and there were frequent mortgage

A VA loan is a mortgage loan, and it is supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs. This kind of mortgage is intended for people who are either serving or have previously served in the military. It is not the

A VA loan, confirms the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is offered through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The VA loan was first created in 1944 to make it easier for military personnel to buy a house. Designed to help servicemembers, veterans, and their families, VA mortgage loans are structured by the VA and funded through a

Ginnie Mae, Frannie Mae, and Freddie Mac were U.S. government agencies that guaranteed various types of mortgage loans. They allowed mortgage lenders to obtain a better price for their mortgage loans in the securities market. Lenders used the proceeds to make new mortgage loans available.

(Spring, Texas) A VA Loan offers numerous benefits to those who are currently serving our country in the armed forces or those who have done so in the past. The VA home loan program offers no down payments, limitations on how much a buyer can be asked to pay in closing costs, no monthly mortgage insurance premiums and a property value appraisal. When the loan is used to purchase a new home, inspections take place at various stages of the process and the builder must provide a one year warranty. Financial counseling and personal loan servicing are two features of this program also. Once a person answers what is a VA home loan, he or she understands why many choose this financing option.

Lending institutions also saw a change. In the 1990s, the federal government desired more people to own homes in the United States and lenders were urged to make home loans more attainable for a wider consumer base (Melicher & Norton, 2014, p. 168).

Before the 1970s the banking was not a business that you went into to make money. That was until Louis Ranieri came around. Louis Ranieri had one idea that changed the housing market forever. His plan was to have a mortgage back security. A mortgage back security is an assist based security backed by a mortgage. For example, if you use your mortgage to start a business, your business is backed by that mortgage. The average mortgage loan has a fixed rate loan and takes thirty years to pay off, but then he thought to bundle them all together. They thought these would still be less risky because who would not pay their mortgage. They were doing hundreds of million dollars in mortgage bonds a year, but that all changed when they ran out of mortgages to put into the bonds. If there were no bonds then there was nothing left to make money, and the banking world was going to back to the way it was. Rather than letting that happen, the banks made a loan called a subprime loan.

Housing prices in the United States rose steadily after the World War II. Although some research indicated that the financial crisis started in the US housing market, the main cause of the financial crisis between 2007 and 2009 was actually the combination of housing bubble and credit boom. The banks created so much loan that pushed the housing price to the peak. As the bank lend out a huge amount of money, the level of individual debt also rose along with the housing price. Since the debt rose faster than people’s income, people were unable to repay their loan and bank found themselves were in danger. As this showed a signal for people, people withdrew money from the banks they considered as “safe” before, and increased the “haircuts” on repos and difficulties experienced by commercial paper issuers. This caused the short term funding market in the shadow banking system appeared a

Congress is continuously attempting to decide if Fannie Mae should be privatized or owned by the government. One thing the government should focus on is reducing the monopoly characteristics in Fannie Mae. With government intervention, Fannie Mae should be broken up into many smaller companies. This would spread the risk among the financial market and Fannie Mae would have to compete against other companies to stay in business. If unfortunate events lead to another economic crisis, the financial pressure would be placed on more than one company and investors would not have to rely on Fannie Mae to stay afloat (Reiss, David, 951-952). This idea was recently discussed among two senators, Bob Corker and Mark Warner who consider splitting Fannie’s single-family business from their multifamily business. They think the single-family businesses could then be split again into smaller companies (www.money.cnn.com).