Proposed Legislation: Fannie And Freddie Are Here To Stay - There Is No Alternative

Since the US government nationalized the two GSEs in 2008 in a $187 billion bailout of the mortgage giants, there have been consistent calls for them to be wound down and for the private sector to fill the void. As we discussed, this view is, or was, shared by new Fed Chairman, Jay Powell.

Mr. Powell has called on Congress to overhaul the housing finance system, saying he’d like to see the country’s two large mortgage-finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, move out from under government conservatorship. More private capital in those firms would reduce the risk of a taxpayer-funded bailout in the event of a downturn, he said in a speech in July.  Although the Fed isn’t responsible for housing finance, it supervises some of the country’s largest lenders who frequently sell their loan to the two agencies. “No single housing finance institution should be too big to fail,” he said.

In August this year, Fannie and Freddie’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), published the results of its latest annual stress tests on the two GSE’s. The FHFA outlined a “severely adverse” scenario in which US real GDP decline 6.5%, the unemployment rate rises to 10.0%, equity prices decline almost 50%, home prices decline 25% and commercial real estate prices by 35%. Under these conditions, it estimates Fannie and Freddie would need a bailout of up to $100 billion in the form of a draw on the Treasury (depending on how they treat assets to offset tax).

Mortgages guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie amount to about $4 trillion and account for about 40% of the total US market.

Note: 2017 data through June. Sources: Inside Mortgage Finance, Urban Institute

Sadly, after almost a decade of federal ownership, the hope that Fannie and Freddie could be wound down has evaporated. Senators on both sides of the political divide have concluded that they are too big and too risky to replace. Proposed legislation in 2018 will see them retained at the centre of the US mortgage industry, rather than replacing them as a previous senate proposal tried and failed four years ago. According to the Wall Street Journal.

Lawmakers in both parties and the Trump administration are negotiating overhauls of the two companies—critical to home mortgages but in government conservatorship since the financial crisis—that could keep them at the center of the U.S. mortgage market for years to come, abandoning long-stalled proposals to wind them down, people familiar with the matter said.

Bipartisan Senate legislation set to be introduced in early 2018 marks the clearest sign of this reversal and shows how the companies, entering their 10th year under federal control, have proven too risky to attempt replacing. The housing market has seen strong demand in recent years, driven in part by steady access for many Americans to 4% or lower 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, thanks in part to a government backstop of the companies. Advancing legislation to refashion the nation’s $10 trillion mortgage market is a heavy political lift and may yet sputter during the coming midterm-election year, as a prior Senate effort did four years ago. One big difference this time around: a more incremental approach largely reliant on the existing housing-finance framework.

The new plan, proposed by Senators. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and Mark Warner (D., Va.) could be introduced as early as next month. Instead of a new mortgage-finance system, Fannie and Freddie will be retained under government control and permitted to issue mortgage securities guaranteed by the Treasury until private sector competitors emerge. The GSE’s investment portfolios, which have fallen to less than $250 billion each from over $900 billion each at their peak, could be liquidated under the Senate plan.

“We’re looking for a more simplified approach that protects the taxpayer, preserves the 30-year fixed mortgage and includes stronger access and affordability provisions,” Mr. Warner said in a statement Friday.

However, Bloomberg’s sources acknowledge that a private sector alternative to Fannie and Freddie will not only take years to emerge, but it’s not clear which companies will enter the market. Besides having the advantage of bi-partisanship, the proposals have the advantage that politicians who wish to reform mortgage finance are reaching retirement age as Bloomberg notes.

Another factor bolstering chances for a deal is the retirement of Washington officials interested in reducing government control of housing, including Mr. Corker. The Tennessee senator has been working with Mr. Warner and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R., Idaho) all year on the issue, according to people familiar with the deliberations, and Mr. Crapo has made the overhaul a top goal for his panel.

Even House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas) signaled this month in a speech to Realtors that he would like to see a Fannie and Freddie deal in what is to be his final year in Congress. Mr. Hensarling said he is still committed to replacing the companies, but has backed off a position that any future setup provide no federal backstop.

Reforming mortgage finance has not been a focus for the Trump administration and nor has it endorsed any proposed legislation thus far. However, Treasury officials are reported to have been in close contact with the Senate officials as the plan has emerged. Furthermore, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who also headed up Goldman’s mortgage securities department in the late 1990s, disagreed with calls for abolishing Fannie and Freddie last month.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he said in an interview at November’s Wall Street Journal CEO Council meeting. “We have got to make sure that the housing system is built to last.”

Bloomberg reports that supporters of Corker and Warner’s proposal see a “narrow window” in early 2018 when the legislation could be added on to another bill to reduce post-crisis regulations in the financial sector.

The question about what to do with Fannie and Freddie has now come full circle since the financial crisis. In its aftermath, the consensus view became so negative that even long-time supporters, like Democrat Barney Frank, capitulated, saying they should be abolished. In 2013, Obama called on Congress to wind them down and “end Fannie and Freddie as we know them”. However, the tide started to turn shortly after due to the lack of confidence in mortgage bonds that didn’t have a government guarantee. The latest Senate proposal is the first having bipartisan backing which keeps Fannie and Freddie instead of replacing them.

So, a bit like the “Too Big To Fail” banks, the encroachment of government into parts of the financial system which it should never have entered, makes winding back that intervention difficult, if not impossible. We could have seen it coming as Bloomberg laments.

Washington’s about-face will come as little surprise to market participants who for years predicted that efforts to replace Fannie and Freddie, which together back around half of all outstanding mortgages, would prove too difficult. But the shift on Capitol Hill nevertheless illustrates one way in which policy ideologues appear to have lost ground to market realities.

 

QE Unwind is Really Happening: Fed Assets Drop To Lowest Level In Over Three Years

Submitted by Wolf Richter of Wolf Street

The Fed’s balance sheet for the week ending December 6, completes the second month of the QE-unwind. Total assets initially zigzagged within a tight range to end October where it started, at $4,456 billion. But in November, holdings drifted lower, and by December 6 were at $4,437 billion, the lowest since September 17, 2014:

“Balance sheet normalization?” Well, in baby steps. But the devil is in the details.

The Fed’s announced plan is to shrink the balance sheet by $10 billion a month in October, November, and December, then accelerate the pace every three months. By October 2018, the Fed would reduce its holdings by up to $50 billion a month (= $600 billion a year) and continue at that rate until it deems the level of its holdings “normal” – the new normal, whatever that may turn out to be.

Still, the decline so far, given the gargantuan size of the balance sheet, barely shows up:

The Fed is unloading its Treasuries alright.

As part of the $10-billion-a-month unwind from October through December, the Fed is supposed to unload $6 billion in Treasury securities a month plus $4 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) a month.

The Fed doesn’t actually sell Treasury securities outright. Instead, it allows some of them, when they mature, to “roll off” the balance sheet without replacement. When the securities mature, the Treasury Department pays the holder the face value. But the Fed, instead of reinvesting the money in new Treasuries, destroys the money – the opposite process of QE, when the Fed created the money to buy securities.

This happens only on dates when Treasuries that the Fed holds mature, usually once or twice a month.

In October, the big day was October 31, when $8.5 billion of Treasuries on the Fed’s books matured. The Fed reinvested $2.5 billion and let $6 billion “roll off.” Hence, the amount of Treasuries fell by about $6 billion from an all-time record $2,465.7 billion on October 25 to $2,459.8 billion on November 1.

In November, there were two big maturity dates:

• November 15, about $11 billion in Treasuries matured. The Fed allowed $3.4 billion to “roll off” without replacement.


• November 30, about $7.9 billion matured. The Fed allowed $2.5 billion to roll off without replacement.

For all of November, the balance of Treasuries fell by $5.3 billion to $2,454.5 billion, in line with the plan, and the lowest level since October 8, 2014:

Mortgage-backed securities are a different animal.

As part of QE, the Fed acquired residential MBS guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. Now, as part of its $10-billion-a-month QE-unwind, the Fed is supposed to shed up to $4 billion a month in these MBS. And?

At the beginning of October, the Fed held $1,768.2 billion in MBS. The balances then jumped up and down on a weekly basis and ended October at $1,770.6 billion, or $2.4 billion higher than at the beginning of the QE-unwind.

Same scenario in November, though they have started to edge down overall just a tiny bit to $1,767 billion, the lowest by a smidgen since March 8, 2017:

Residential MBS differ from bonds. Fannie Mae et al. regularly pass through principal payments to MBS holders as underlying mortgages get paid down or get paid off. Thus, the principal shrinks until the remainder is redeemed at maturity.

To keep the MBS balance steady, the Fed, via the New York Fed’s Open Market Operations (OMO), buys MBS in the “to-be-announced market,” or “TBA market.” This is a trade where the actual MBS is not designated at the time of the trade but will be announced 48 hours before the established settlement date, which can be two to three months later.

But the Fed books its MBS holdings on a settlement-date basis. So there is a mismatch between the date the Fed receives principal payments and the date reinvestment trades settle. Hence the jagged line in the chart above.

So when will the $4-billion-a-month in MBS reductions show up on the Fed’s balance sheet?

The first MBS reinvestment trades under the QE-unwind plan were conducted in October. Given the lag to settlement date of two to three months, the first visible impact on the balance sheet would start no earlier than December. This is where we are now, on the verge of seeing it.

The line in the MBS chart will always bounce up and down due to the mismatch between the date the Fed receives principal payments and the date reinvestment trades settle. But the line should start trending down, with noticeably lower lows and lower highs.

For the first three months, the QE unwind only removes about $10 billion a month, a negligible amount, given the vast markets and excess liquidity. But it picks up steam every three months. By October 2018, if the plan is still on, the QE unwind will remove $50 billion a month from the markets. This process will do the opposite of what QE had done: it will gradually destroy some of the $3.6 trillion that the Fed had created during QE. And by that time the broader effects of QE – asset price inflation – should also start to reverse.

Housing Bubble 2.0: Home Equity Loans Soar To Highest Level Since 2008

It seems as though the practice of using one"s home as a personal ATM machine is making a "yuge" comeback of late thanks, at least in part, to the same aggressive lending terms and attractive teaser rates that nearly sank the world economy just under a decade ago.  According the Wall Street Journal and Equifax, home equity originations soared to $46 billion in 2Q 2017, the highest level since the market collapsed in 2008.

“If customers feel like their home values are stable or increasing, and if they feel like their job prospects are good—that they will have the ability to pay back a loan they take—then they will start to take out more home-equity lines,” said Mike Kinane, head of U.S. consumer-lending products at TD Bank. “That is what we are starting to see.”

Home-equity line originations rose 8% to nearly $46 billion in the second quarter, their highest level since 2008, according to credit-reporting firm Equifax . Borrowing via cash-out mortgage refinances hit $15 billion, up 6% from a year earlier, according to recent data from Freddie Mac.

The main engine driving demand: rising home prices. The median sale price of an existing home rose to $263,800 in June, the highest on record, up 40% from $187,900 at the start of 2014, according to the National Association of Realtors.

But, don"t worry because the banks and loan officers re-inflating the housing bubble are here to assure you that it"s all different this time around...

Banks insist the increased borrowing doesn’t herald a return to housing-bubble days when consumers came to view their homes as cash registers. Banks say they are being more cautious in how they make such loans and some add they are encouraging borrowers to tackle renovations or consolidate debt—uses that are considered investments rather than luxuries.

“We continue to watch what’s going on and the way it’s being done, but it’s much different from before the crisis,” said Tom Wind, head of U.S. Bancorp ’s home-mortgage division. Mr. Wind added that the bank expects this type of borrowing to keep rebounding because the equity in people’s homes is “meaningful and people want things like renovations.”

...because home prices appreciating at over 5x inflation is just "normal."

But perhaps the best example of why "this time is different" is illustrated by the case study of Marc Yu of Atlanta who took out a home equity loan on his family"s home just so he could afford the down payment on an "investment property".  See, completely different this time.

Marc Yu took out a home-equity line to buy an investment property, a house he now rents out at a profit. He has thought about paying off the line early, but instead decided to keep it open as long as interest rates stay relatively low.

“I wanted to use the equity” in the first house, rather than “it just sitting there,” said Mr. Yu, who works in digital forensics in the Atlanta area.

Seems like we"ve seen this movie before...

Fannie, Freddie Would Need $100BN Bailout In New Financial Crisis

While the latest Fed stress test found that all US commercial banks have enough capital to survive even an "adverse" stress scenario, a severe recession in which the VIX hypothetically soars to 70, the two US mortgage giants would not be quite so lucky: according to the results from the annual stress test of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac released today by their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the "GSEs" which were nationalized a decade ago in the early days of the crisis, would need as much as $100 billion in bailout funding in the form of a potential incremental Treasury draw, in the event of a new economic crisis.

Under the "severely adverse" scenario, i.e., a "severe global recession" U.S. real GDP begins to decline immediately and reaches a trough in the second quarter of 2018 after a decline of 6.50% from the pre-recession peak. The rate of unemployment increases from 4.7% to a peak of 10.0% in the third quarter of 2018. CPI declines to about 1.25% by the second quarter of 2017 (so not that much further from here) and then rises to approximately 1.75% by the middle of 2018. Outright deflation is not even considered.

In addition, equity prices fall by approximately 50% from the start of the planning horizon through the end of 2017, and equity volatility soars, approaching levels last seen in 2008. Home prices decline by approximately 25% , and commercial real estate prices fall by 35% through the first quarter of 2019.  The Severely Adverse scenario also includes a global market shock component that impacts the Enterprises’ retained portfolios. The global market shock involves large and immediate changes in asset prices, interest rates, and spreads caused by general market dislocation, uncertainty in the global economy, and significant market illiquidity. Option-adjusted spreads on mortgage-backed securities widen significantly in this scenario.

Most interesting is the following provision in the "severly adverse" scenario: the global market shock also includes a counterparty default component that assumes the failure of each Enterprise’s largest counterparty. Which, of course, is ironic because the Fed"s own stress test of commercial banks did not anticipate any bank failing. The global market shock is treated as an instantaneous loss and reduction of capital in the first quarter of the planning horizon, and the scenario assumes no recovery of these losses by the Enterprises in future quarters.

The two companies, which buy mortgages from lenders, wrap them into securities and make guarantees to investors in case the loans default backing more than $4 trillion in securities, would need to draw between $34.8 billion and $99.6 billion in U.S. Treasury aid under a “severely adverse” scenario, depending on how they treated assets used to offset taxes, of which $42.6 billion would go to Freddie and $57 billion to Fannie. The losses would leave $158.4 billion to $223.2 billion available to the companies under their bailout agreements.

The US government nationalized Fannie and Freddie in 2008, injecting them with $187.5 billion in bailout money. Nearly ten years later they will have repaid taxpayers about $275.9 billion by the end of next month, assuming they pay their combined September dividend of about $5 billion. The companies have as much as $258 billion in taxpayer funding available under the terms of the PSPA funding commitment.

According to Bloomberg, the surprisingly large funding "stress" gap is likely to be used both by proponents of letting the two companies build a larger capital buffer and by some policy makers who think such an effort isn’t needed.

Recall that one of the longest-running financial debates within the financial community is whether the Treasury overstepped its boundaries when it bailed-in GSEs shareholders as part of their rescue in 2007, with various activist shareholders demanding a return to the pre-bailout status quo, a move which would likely result in substantial equity upside. Under the current terms of their bailout agreements, Fannie and Freddie are required to turn over nearly all profits to Treasury in the form of dividend payments. They are currently permitted to retain a capital buffer of $600 million apiece, a level which will fall to zero next year.

FHFA Director Mel Watt has warned against letting the buffer disappear and said he may allow the companies to build some capital. The retained earnings, which would cut the taxpayer dividend, would only be enough to protect against small losses rather than the dramatic impact of a severe crisis, Watt and other FHFA officials have said.

Meanwhile, as the debate over the proper size of the GSE buffer continues, the two companies have taken other steps over the past eight years to reduce their risk of losses in another crisis and reduce their reliance on a loss buffer. The companies’ books of business are experiencing their lowest default rates in years, and both have accelerated sales of new securities designed to protect them from some losses if defaults increase.

While the losses projected in Monday’s report will not be large enough to eat through the full funding commitment available to the two companies, Mel Watt and others have said that they’re unsure of how the mortgage-bond market would react if the funding started to fall. Under the bailout agreements, the funds can’t be replenished. They can, however, be bailed out all over again and likely will be if the "severely adverse" scenario envisioned indeed strikes.

The silver lining in this year"s report is that Fannie and Freddie’s bailout funding need was lower than estimated in prior years, "reflecting both slightly different tests and improving risk profiles at the companies." Last year, FHFA said the companies would need as much as $126 billion, while in 2015 the agency said they would need up to $157.3 billion.

Demand For Hong Kong Micro Apartments Surges As Buyers "Downgrade Expectations"

The surge in Hong Kong housing costs has lifted home prices well beyond the bounds of affordability for most local families and young professionals, leading to long lines at housing sales that were sometimes oversubscribed by as much as 15x. But while home prices have risen for every type of home, Bloomberg notes that the intensifying demand for micro-apartments - some of which are as small as 128 square feet (about the size of a garden shed) - has caused prices for this segment of the housing market to climb more quickly than normal-sized homes. Why? Because they’re practically all Chinese buyers can afford.

“The pool of buyers for small flats is getting bigger and bigger because people have to downgrade their expectations of the size of flats they can live in,” said Nicole Wong, regional head of property research at CLSA Ltd. in Hong Kong.

One 161 square foot micro apartment sold by property giant Henderson Land Development Co. was bought for just under $500,000. For that amount, buyers would be better off sleeping in their cars. Specifically, a Tesla Model X, which, as Bloomberg notes, is about 160 square feet, the same size of the above-mentioned apartment. Bizarrely, this is one instance where a Tesla Model X might be considered a bargain: They start at $150,000 in Hong Kong.

Indeed, the intensifying demand for smaller apartments has caused their prices to rise much more quickly than those of larger homes. The average micro apartment price has increased by 99% between 2010 – when they comprised just 5 percent of the Hong Kong market – and 2016 – when they jumped to 27 percent of the total. According to government figures, micro apartments are forecast to comprise 43 percent of new housing stock next year.

Here’s Bloomberg:

“The higher cost of smaller units is demonstrated by the square footage price: At a Kowloon City development, a 181 square foot apartment on a high floor sold in May for HK$25,897 ($3,321) a square foot, or HK$4.69 million. A larger apartment that’s similarly positioned sold two days later for HK$23,047 a square foot — a HK$2,183 difference.

The trend reflects the unintended consequences of government policies meant to cool the property market, which are instead driving demand for the smallest apartments. Developers, looking to help the government achieve supply targets while aiming to lower the buyer’s price threshold, need to recover the record prices they’re spending at land auctions — so they’re squeezing more units into a single plot of land.

Even Hong Kong"s actual parking spaces cost more than homes in much of the developed world. One in a prime building of Hong Kong sold for the equivalent of $664,300 in April, local newspaper Ming Pao reported this week.

Incoming Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who takes over on July 1, the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule, has promised to increase the home ownership rate by providing government help for people too wealthy for public housing and too poor to afford an apartment of their own.”

The state of Hong Kong’s housing market has changed dramatically since early 2016, when prices were down as much as 10% from a recent peak. Compounding the misguided policies of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which Bloomberg alluded to above, the massive credit injection authorized by Chinese financial authorities has also contributed to the giant run-up in HK home prices, which have tripled over the past decade.

According to the latest data from Hong Kong"s Centaline Property Centa-City Leading Index of existing homes, prices in Hong Kong have risen an unprecedented 23% in the past year. Prices have increased by as much as 2% per day, and it seems that nary a week passes without home prices on the island setting some new record.

But what makes this particular bubble different is that this time, it is obvious to everyone. An editorial in The Standard newspaper published last month was surprisingly accurate: “successive moves by the government in recent memory to cool the property market only resulted in it becoming crazier. The result is a sea of madness.”

Yet these warnings have failed to deter local buyers, who have turned up in droves at each new property sale, where snaking queues of would-be homeowners line up in the hope of being the winning bidder for one of several properties for sales. At the Victoria Skye, a luxury project at the former airport site of Kai Tak and at the Ocean Pride development by Cheung Kong Property Holdings people were lining up days ahead of time for their chance to buy a home at all time high prices.

Another HK new home sales oversubsribed 14.8x today, not as hot as ystdy "cos >HKD18k/sq ft. Only hundreds buyers. pic.twitter.com/WrraPLudEk

— Simon Ting (@simonting) May 27, 2017

It is also obvious to the local central bank, which, like Vancouver and Toronto, appears powerless to halt the tsunami of hot mainland money spilling over the border. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has been tightening rules for lenders, Bloomberg writes, including restricting levels of lending to developers, as it tries to limit financial risks and take some of the heat out of the market.

Speaking at a Legislative Council meeting last month, Hong Kong"s central bank chief, HKMA Chief Executive Norman Chan, said levels of demand were reminiscent of 20 years ago, just before Hong Kong suffered a property bust.

Chan expressed concern that people with limited financial resources were buying just because they thought prices would only keep going up, just like in a bubble. He said that while the global economy has improved, uncertainties remain and warned that when the property cycle reverses, "the impact will be serious.”

Bloomberg noted that the Hong Kong government, which champions the free market, has no immediate plans to prevent housing sizes from growing ever smaller, preferring to leave flexibility in the market so that developers can respond to demand as needed.

While Carrie Lam’s promises to raise home ownership rates sounds noble, similar thinking helped fuel the subprime bubble in the US. The US government created Freddie Mac and encouraged banks to try and help every willing borrower buy a home, even if they clearly couldn’t afford one. With this in mind, we ask: what’s the point of owning a home if, when the crash comes, banks foreclose, and buyers are put out - often in worse financial circumstances than they were in beforehand?

Time To Add Housing To The Bubble List?

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

Housing is hot again, but lately it’s been overshadowed by flashier bubbles in government debt, tech stocks and possibly cryptocurrencies.

Still, the warning signs are spreading. Today’s Wall Street Journal, for instance, reports that homeowners are back to using their houses as ATMs:

Americans refinancing their mortgages are taking cash out in the process at levels not seen since the financial crisis.

Nearly half of borrowers who refinanced their homes in the first quarter chose the cash-out option, according to data released this week by Freddie Mac. That is the highest level since the fourth quarter of 2008.

The cash-out level is still well below the almost 90% peak hit in the run-up to the housing meltdown. But it is up sharply from the post-crisis nadir of 12% in the second quarter of 2012.

In a cash-out refi, a borrower refinances an existing mortgage with a new one, typically at a lower borrowing cost, that has a higher principal balance than the existing one. This allows the homeowner to pay off the old mortgage and still have cash left over for other uses.

The growing popularity of cash-out refis has helped buoy refinance activity. After booming for several years, demand for refinance mortgages had begun to slow as the Federal Reserve began increasing short-term interest rates and longer-term bond yields moved higher.

Mortgage rates remain low by historical standards, though. The average rate for a fixed, 30-year mortgage was 3.95%, Freddie Mac reported this week.

Meanwhile, rising home prices have helped increase the equity homeowners have in their houses. This allows more people to refinance to capture the benefit of lower mortgage rates.

And borrowers whose homes are rising in value are often more likely to be interested in refinancing for cash. For example, in Denver and Dallas, where home prices have jumped, more than half of refinancers opted for cash last year, according to Freddie Mac.

To some housing-market observers, the fact that more homeowners are tapping their homes for cash represents a healthy confidence in the economy. It comes against a backdrop of continued gains in employment.

At the same time, the increasing use of cash-out refis causes some concern since, in the run-up to the financial crisis, borrowers used their homes like veritable ATMs.

Len Kiefer, Freddie Mac’s deputy chief economist, says this time has been different. Borrowers now are subject to stricter standards when they get a loan or refinance a mortgage. There is also less money at stake now than a decade ago.

Cash-out refis in the first quarter represented about $14 billion in net home equity compared with more than $80 billion in each of three straight quarters in 2006. On an annual basis, total home equity cashed out in 2016 was $61 billion, according to Freddie Mac, versus $321 billion in 2006.

“People have been using cash-out for years,” Mr. Kiefer said. “From a personal-finance standpoint, it can make a lot of sense.”

One example is a borrower using the cash from a refinance to consolidate credit-card debt that has far higher yields. That in many cases can produce a big savings in debt-servicing costs by replacing debt that has double-digit interest rates with a loan that has a rate in the low single digits.

Here we go again. In every cycle, destructive behavior like using home equity to pay off credit cards or take vacations or whatever starts to surge. And every time the banking/real estate complex trots out paid spokesmen masquerading as economists to explain that this behavior is perfectly safe because everything else is going so well.

This deception eventually blows up in their faces, the pseudo-economists are disgraced (See Realtors’ Former Top Economist Says Don’t Blame the Messenger) and the people suckered in by the experts’ assurances are stuck with bills they can’t pay.

If cash-out refis continue to soar in the second quarter, then housing is officially a bubble again — with one big difference: This time around it’s just one of many, which means the eventual reckoning will be a lot more complex and interesting.

Mortgage Rates Tumble To 6-Month Lows

After a week of dismal housing data, a silver lining perhaps. The spike in U.S. mortgage rates since the November presidential election has been cut in half.

As Bloomberg notes, the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage dropped in the week ended Thursday to a six-month low of 3.95 percent, according to Freddie Mac data.

In the seven weeks after the election, borrowing costs increased by 75 basis points to 4.32 percent at the end of December, the highest since April 2014.

They’ve since managed to retreat 37 basis points - potentially good news for homebuyers and builders as the spring selling season continues to disappoint.

As MishTalk"s Mike Shedlock reminds us: Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says “Demand is easily outstripping supply in most of the country.”

How long can Yun’s silly argument go on?

There is not a supply shortage. Rather, there is a supply shortage of homes people can afford at which buyers are willing to sell. If homes were priced to sell, more homes would sell.

Despite rising prices, buyers want higher prices than they can get. At some point, rising prices were bound to choke off sales.

It’s too early to conclude a sustainable downtrend in housing has started, but if it has, it would be on top of an overall slowdown in consumer spending led by a slowdown in auto sales.

Here is my estimate of the economic and Fed consensus: Don’t worry, it’s just a temporary soft patch in March, April, and May. The second quarter half recovery is still on schedule.

Are US Taxpayers Now On The Hook For Risky Wall Street Real-Estate-Backed Bonds?

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

I’m fairly certain very few of you have heard of broker price opinions, or BPOs, but it’s something I think we should all become aware of given the influence of BPOs in the market for valuing residential real estate securitized bonds.

Before we get to that, let’s revisit a little contemporary American robber baron history. In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. financial crisis, financial oligarchs immediately got to work helping Main Street climb out of the Wall Street created ditch by buying foreclosed homes from hordes of newly destitute Americans and then renting them back to those same people.

I wrote many articles about this trend over the years, starting with the January 2013 piece, America Meet Your New Slumlord: Wall Street. Here’s an excerpt:

Well they aren’t really your “new” slumlord in the sense you have been debt slaves to the financials system for decades.  What I really mean is that it is now becoming overt and literal.  Literal because financiers are now the main players in the real estate market and are buying all the homes ordinary citizens were kicked out of over the past few years.  Yep, we bailed out the financial system so that financiers with access to cheap credit can buy up all of America’s real estate so that they can then rent it back to you later.

Fast forward a few years, and private equity is frantically packaging these real estate rental properties into bonds. In order to value the real estate collateral you need some sort of appraisal, but the normal process of actually looking at properties is seen as too costly and time consuming, so market players are cutting corners by using “broker price opinions,” or BPOs.

As Bloomberg reports, this practice is coming under increased scrutiny and for good reason:

U.S. securities regulators are investigating whether bonds backed by single-family rental homes and sold by Wall Street’s biggest residential landlords used overvalued property assessments.

Radian Group Inc.’s Green River Capital unit is one of the market participants that received a request for information from the Securities and Exchange Commission in March about broker price opinions, or BPOs, the company said in a regulatory filinglate Friday. Green River provides BPOs that are used to value real estate in securitizations.

The agency has been looking at whether BPOs were wrongly inflated, and similar letters were sent to other companies, potentially serving as a starting point for an industrywide probe, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The person asked not to be identified because the matter is private.

Green River is one of several firms that provide BPOs to the units of private-equity firms and other investors who bought up hundreds of thousands of properties in cities across the U.S. after the housing bubble burst. Many of them focused on distressed homes whose owners were evicted during the Great Recession.

Never forget, what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street! Also, they hate us for our freedoms.

Broker price opinions are a cheaper and less-stringent way to evaluate what a property is worth than an appraisal. Property valuations are a sensitive subject in the housing industry because regulators said inflated appraisals contributed to the housing bubble a decade ago.

The biggest private-equity landlords, led by Blackstone Group LP’s Invitation Homes, have sold more than $15 billion in bonds since 2013 backed by some 120,000 rental homes, according to data from Morningstar, and many of those deals were valued using BPOs. One recent bond deal tied to Invitation Homes was backed by guarantees from U.S. taxpayers.

Please tell me this is a joke.

The BPOs are key elements in securitizations, determining basic figures such as how much rent to charge tenants, how much leverage and risk is embedded in the deal and how much investors could recover if the bonds go sour. Many of the securities were assigned AAA grades and sold off to investors such as pension funds.

Is this 2006 or 2017?

No here’s where it gets truly disturbing.

In traditional real estate deals, these opinions help establish sales prices, but in these bond deals, they help estimate how much could be recovered in a liquidation. Some analysts say the BPOs they don’t take into account a possible plunge in home prices, and the values tend to be more optimistic than a full appraisal. Unlike appraisals, BPOs also aren’t necessarily done by a licensed professional, nor does the inspector always go inside to look around, which is standard procedure for an appraisal.

In one April securities offering of about $944.5 million, Green River submitted BPOs that relied on “drive-by” evaluations, and homes were “assumed to be repaired and in good condition,” according to a deal prospectus issued by Fannie Mae. The BPO “is not intended to be a representation as to the past, present or future market values of any of the properties.”

The underlying mortgage in that deal, tied to rental properties owned by Invitation Homes, was guaranteed by Fannie Mae. That’s the first time a taxpayer-backed home finance company has guaranteed such a loan. Freddie Mac is also looking into getting involved in the market by providing its guarantee.

When private equity landlords opted to use BPOs instead of appraisals in their securitizations, some investors expressed skepticism and bond graders applied discounts to the BPOs. Moody’s Investors Service, for example, applied a 15 percent haircut to BPO valuations when grading a transaction last August, citing inherent risks of using BPOs on residential properties instead of an appraisal.

I’m sure it’ll be fine, and if not who cares? The U.S. taxpayer is always available for a good fleecing.

Commercial Property Lending Tumbles As Retail / Hotel Originations Plunge

For those of you out there clinging to your commercial REIT stocks for their "defensive" dividend yields while praying that the whole "retail implosion" thing will simply go away, you may want to avert your eyes now.  According to the Mortgage Bankers Association 4Q 2016 commercial real estate loan originations survey, mortgage originations related to discretionary segments of the economy are in complete free fall with retail and hotel volumes down 19% and 39%, respectively.    

A decrease in originations for hotel, health care, and retail properties led the overall decline in commercial/multifamily lending volumes when compared to the fourth quarter of 2015. The fourth quarter saw a 39 percent year-over-year decrease in the dollar volume of loans for hotel properties, a 24 percent decrease for health care properties, a 19 percent decrease for retail properties, a 4 percent decrease for industrial properties, a one percent decrease in multifamily property loans, and a 6 percent increase in office property loans.

Commercial banks and insurance companies pulled back on new originations while Fannie/Freddie picked up the slack.

Among investor types, the dollar volume of loans originated for commercial bank portfolios decreased by 17 percent year-over-year. There was a 6 percent year-over-year decline for life insurance company loans, a 2 percent decrease in Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS) loans, and a 4 percent increase in the dollar volume of Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) loans.

2016 marked the first YoY 4Q decline since the height of the "great recession".

Meanwhile, via the Wall Street Journal, prescient market observers remind us that markets tend to cycle rather than just rising in perpetuity...shocking news.

Still, the bank recognizes that property values are at record levels after rising for eight years. “I’d say, if I could look back one year ago, we’re probably more cautious [now],” Mr. Myers said.

Some lenders are competing by making riskier loans such as those that finance construction or occupy a “mezzanine” position between first mortgages and equity. In the first quarter of 2017, construction and land loans on bank balance sheets were up 12.8% to $306.1 billion compared with the same period a year earlier, according to loan tracker Trepp LLC.

Lenders and developers have gotten especially aggressive in building rental apartments. More units are under way today than in any period since the mid-1970s, experts said.

“There’s no current looming event that regulators are looking to say we foresee a problem,” said Matthew Anderson, managing director of Trepp. “It’s just the sheer volume and pace of activity and the length of how long it’s gone on.”

But we"re sure this is just another temporary BTFD opportunity.

Obamacare Implosion Now? Since Obama Siphoned GSE Dividends To Prop Up, Can Trump Simply Halt 1st Qtr Sweep?

Earlier this month, Harvard Ph.D. Jerome Corsi of InfoWars (@jerome_corsi) and a CPA "who worked for two years for a major U.S. accounting firm as an outside auditor for Freddie Mac," confirmed a 2012 scheme hatched by the Obama administration to funnel hundreds of billions in dividends from Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prop up the failing Obamacare program - by paying subsidies to insurers to remain in the system.

If you need to catch up on it, read the InfoWars article above or watch this 18 minute video:

  

The conclusion reached by Corsi and others is that this was probably illegal.

In fact, House Republicans actually sued the Obama Administration in 2014 over the fact that the subsidies to insurers weren"t appropriated by congress and won, which the Obama administration appealed. As Zerohedge and the Atlanta Journal Constitution pointed out last week, the Trump administration has until May 22nd to decide whether or not to pursue the appeal:

In 2014, House Republicans sued the Obama administration over the constitutionality of the cost-sharing reduction payments, which had not been appropriated by Congress. The lawmakers won the lawsuit, and the Obama administration appealed it. Late last year, with a new administration on the other end of the suit, the House sought to pause the proceedings — with a deadline for a status update in late May. -AJC

And a ZeroHedge analysis:

Of course, any decision to remove those subsidies would likely result in yet another massive round of premium hikes and further withdrawals from the already crippled exchanges where an astounding number of counties across the country have already been cut to just 1 health insurance provider.  And, as we"ve pointed out before, higher rates = lower participation = deterioration of risk pool = higher rates....and the cycle just repeats until it eventually collapses. -ZeroHedge

Meanwhile, President Trump has made several Tweets since the Ryancare debacle in congress:

ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 25, 2017

The Democrats will make a deal with me on healthcare as soon as ObamaCare folds - not long. Do not worry, we are in very good shape!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017

But wait, could it happen even sooner? Former Blackrock portfolio manager Ed Dowd may be on to something...

By not long...do you literally mean weeks as you order the stop of the illegal Fannie/Freddy dividend sweep into Treasury thus ensuring ????? https://t.co/VEQ4bkgduG

— Ed (@DowdEdward) March 28, 2017

Since MSM won"t report #Fanniegate all #Trump has to do is stop the steal and Obamacareliterally implodes ???? Within weeks. Watch Dems run!???? https://t.co/vLzeJQbEhR

— Ed (@DowdEdward) March 26, 2017

Simple question: what if Trump"s Treasury simply stopped the illegal dividend sweep NOW? It is the end of the 1st quarter, after all...

Not only would it force the MSM to cover Obama"s 2012 scheme to siphon funds from Fannie and Freddie, the stage would be set for far more sensible healthcare solutions from lawmakers who aren"t simply shilling for the industry.

Report: Obama illegally robbed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to fund Obamacare scheme

Federal court litigation provides evidence the Obama administration illegally diverted taxpayer funds that had not been appropriated by Congress in an unconstitutional scheme to keep Obamacare from imploding.

In 2016, a U.S. District judge caught the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services Department acting unconstitutionally and therefore put an end to the illegal diversion of taxpayer funds, but the Obama administration didn’t stop there.

The Obama administration instead turned to the nation’s two government-sponsored mortgage giants – the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as “Fannie Mae,” and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, commonly known as “Freddie Mac” – to invent a new diversion of funds in a desperate attempt to keep Obamacare from collapsing.

A key date is May 12, 2016. That was the day when U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, in the case U.S. House of Representatives v. Burwell, (130 F. Supp. 3d 53, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia), ruled against Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell.

Judge Collyer decided HHS Secretary Burwell had no constitutional authority to divert funds Congress appropriated to one section of the ACA to fund Obamacare subsidy payments to insurers under another section of the ACA, Section 1402 – the clause defining the insurer subsidies – when Congress specifically declined to appropriate any funds to Section 1402 for paying the insurance subsidy.

“Paying out Section 1402 reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution,” Judge Collyer concluded. “Congress authorized reduced cost sharing but did not appropriate monies for it, in the Fiscal Year 2014 budget or since.”

“Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one.”

The U.S. District court in this ruling entered judgment in favor of the House of Representatives, barring HHS from using unappropriated money to pay insurers under Section 1402.

What was at issue in Section 1402 was the Obamacare provision that capped the amount of federal subsidies under Section 1402 that lower-income families could use to pay for insurance purchased on state insurance exchanges, particularly the difference between the capped maximum based on a person or family’s income in relation to the federal poverty level.

Congress had refused to pass an appropriation to fund Section 1402 – the section of the ACA that called for making the insurance subsidy payments.

In a report issued in March 2016, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost for providing Section 1402 subsidies over the next ten years (2016-2026) was estimated to be $130 billion.

Forbidden by Judge Collyer’s decision from diverting money Congress appropriated for other ACA provisions to pay Section 1402 subsidies, the Obama administration faced the prospect that the government could not pay subsidies to permit lower-income persons and families to buy the amount of health insurance Obamacare was written to provide them.

Either this, or insurers would be forced to charge middle and high income-persons and families such outrageous amounts for their insurance coverage (to subsidize the poor under ACA) that only the wealthiest could afford to buy health insurance.

In other words, Obamacare was dead in the water if the Obama administration could not find a way to circumvent the District Court’s decision U.S. House of Representatives v. Burwell to fund Section 1402 despite the fact Congress had refused to do so.

Determined to keep Obamacare alive, the Obama administration decided to find a way around Judge Collyer’s ruling.

The fix involved the Obama administration redefining the terms of the 2008 conservatorship agreements which advanced funds to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from a 10% dividend on moneys borrowed to the federal government’s confiscation of 100% of the future and imminent profits of these Government Sponsored Entities, or GSEs.

Miraculously, the Freddie and Fannie “pot of gold” turned out to be almost exactly the amount the Obama administration needed to meet the anticipated insurance company subsidies required to keep Section 1402 in business.

So, how did Fannie and Freddie get this pot of gold, given that only a few years earlier both GSEs were bankrupt?

In 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis caused in part by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, the federal government decided to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which at the time were two shareholder-owned companies.

In passing the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA), the U.S. Congress had fixed the regulatory issues at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, creating a mechanism for them to be placed into conservatorship at federal government’s discretion AND providing up to $187.5 billion in funds that could be advanced to the GSEs through a purchase of senior preferred stock paying a ten percent dividend.

In deciding to bail them out, the federal government took control of the two giant mortgage GSEs, with Fannie and Freddie effectively put into government “conservatorship.”

As part of the conservatorship, the federal government effectively acquired warrants, convertible at a nominal price, which allowed the federal government to acquire 79% of the GSE’s common stock.

This resulted in causing dilution in the percentage of Fannie and Freddie common stock ownership that was left in the hands of private and institutional investors.

Congress’ intent was that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would pay back the Treasury as the mortgage giants returned to profitability.

But after the Treasury was paid back, the terms of HERA anticipated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would pay appropriate dividends to stockholders, including the federal government, leaving enough funds within Freddie and Fannie to “conserve and preserve” the assets of the two GSEs, anticipating their eventual return to a “safe and solvent” operating condition.

In 2012, the Obama administration unilaterally decided to change the terms of HERA by sweeping all the profits of Fannie and Freddie into the Treasury’s general fund.

The Obama administration took this action, the so-called “Net Worth Sweep,” without any Congressional authority to do so.

The result was that the U.S. Treasury “found” a way to sweep 100% of Fannie and Freddie profits into the Treasury’s “general fund,” leaving the giant mortgage GSEs vulnerable to the need for another government bailout should another disruption occur in the nation’s economy.

Because of this decision, the Obama administration on its own authority simply decided to discontinue paying dividends to private and institutional owners of Fannie and Freddie common and preferred stock.

Congress, in passing HERA, never anticipated the Obama administration would take over Fannie and Freddie and strip the agencies of all profits – a move that left private and institutional shareholders in the cold.

Leading up to the decision to sweep Fannie and Freddie’s profits, the GSEs return to imminent profitability was known only by a few government officials and their consultants.

Their own internal forecasts, uncovered in unsealed court documents, showed that Fannie and Freddie’s profitability would soon dramatically outperform the amount of the allowable 10% dividend that the Treasury would receive under the existing Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements.

On August 17, 2012, these same officials and consultants succeeded in engineering with the Federal Housing Financial Agency, FHFA, and the Department of Treasury an amendment to the Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements that allowed the U.S. Treasury to grab ALL Fannie and Freddie profits – regardless how large Fannie and Freddie’s earnings might be.

Between 2012, when the Obama administration began its policy of confiscating all Fannie and Freddie profits and now, Fannie and Freddie have paid the U.S. Treasury general fund more than $240 billion in dividends.

The point is that after May 12, 2016, when U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that HHS had to stop diverting ACA funds to pay Obamacare subsidies, the Obama administration realized that HHS somehow had to fund the estimated $130 billion the HHS would need in un‐appropriated monies to pay health insurers the ACA subsidies required to keep Obamacare alive in Fiscal Year 2013.

Plaintiffs litigating against the Obama administration’s confiscation of Freddie and Fannie earnings have challenged in court whether the Obama administration’s decision to amend the Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement in August 2012 and sweep GSE profits of $130 billion in 2013 ($82.4 billion from Fannie Mae, and $47.6 billion from Freddie Mac) was an attempt to circumvent Congress on the single most important policy priority of the White House.

The timing was particularly interesting given that September 2012 marked the beginning of the sequestration discussions.

Government documents leave little doubt profits from Fannie and Freddie confiscated by the U.S. Treasury have been used by the Obama administration to pay Obamacare subsidies and other items not appropriated by Congress, in complete and illegal circumvention of the District Court’s ruling and the Constitution’s determination that only the Congress shall have the power to tax and spend.

For instance, Chapter 3 of the Congressional Budget Office publication “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2015 to 2025” notes on page 63 that the major contributors to mandatory U.S. government spending include “… outlays for Medicaid, subsidies for health insurance purchases through exchanges, and the government’s transactions with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Why Fannie and Freddie are specified in this context, when Fannie and Freddie have had sufficient earnings to operate without government subsidies since 2008 is made clear a few pages later.

On page 65, in Table 3-2, the CBO report notes “mandatory outlays projected in CBO’s baseline” from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 2014 is -$74 billion and for 2015 a total of -$26 billion.

The figures are “negative dollar amounts” because instead of paying out to Freddie and Fannie, the U.S. Treasury is collecting from Freddie and Fannie, with the proceeds going into the U.S. Treasury general fund to pay “mandatory outlays,” including evidently continued subsidies to insurers, as specified by ACA Section 1402.

In footnote 14 on page 8 of that CBO report lets the cat out of the bag, noting the Obama administration considers payments from Freddie and Fannie “to be outside of the federal government for budgetary purposes,” recording cash payments from Freddie and Fannie to the Treasury as “federal receipts.”

The Obama administration evidently considered this all-too-convenient redefinition of terms allowed the government to argue the use of Fannie and Freddie profits to pay Obamacare Section 1402 subsidies was not in violation of the District Court ruling.

Why? Evidently because Fannie and Freddie profits were not taxpayer-generated, but were profit payments generated by Government Sponsored Entities that still had some common and preferred stock private and institutional shareholder ownership.

In the same footnote, the CBO takes exception with the Obama administration, commenting the CBO considers profit payments to the Treasury made by Fannie and Freddie to be “intragovernmental” receipts going into the same Treasury general fund pot, to be mixed indistinguishably with taxpayer revenue, not distinct public/private GSE “receipts” separately accounted for in the Treasury general fund as distinguishable from taxpayer revenue.

If the federal courts conclude Fannie and Freddie GSE “receipts” to Treasury still need Congressional appropriation to be spent legitimately by the executive branch of government, the Obama administration will have been exposed as having operated outside the Constitution in its desperate attempt to keep the ACA from imploding.

What should be outrageous to progressives understanding the Obama administration subterfuge to keep the ACA alive is that by confiscating Fannie/Freddie profits to keep Obamacare alive, Obama ignored core members of the Democratic Party’s core constituency – affordable housing advocates and minority groups – with little explanation.

Via Infowars

Featured Image: DonkeyHotey/Fickr

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Existing Home Sales Hit Decade High As Prices Jump More Than 7%

So much for concerns that rising rates would slam the US real estate market.

According to the NAR, in January, Existing home sales jumped by 3.3%, well above the 1.1% consensus estimate, and more than reversing last month"s revised -1.6% drop. The annuallized pace of sales rose to 5.69 million, above the 5.54 million estimate, and the biggest monthly jump since March 2016. January"s sales pace was 3.8% higher than a year ago (5.48 million) and surpasses November 2016 (5.60 million) as the strongest since February 2007 (5.79 million).

Praising the rebound in housing transactions, NAR"s chief economist Larry Yun said January"s sales gain signals resilience among consumers even in a rising interest rate environment. "Much of the country saw robust sales activity last month as strong hiring and improved consumer confidence at the end of last year appear to have sparked considerable interest in buying a home," he said. "Market challenges remain, but the housing market is off to a prosperous start as homebuyers staved off inventory levels that are far from adequate and deteriorating affordability conditions."

And yet, there remains a glaring disconnect between the housing transactions, and mortgage applications, which as shown in the chart below, have tumbled in recent weeks far below prior years, as a result of rising rates.

The west led housing transaction, with only the midwest posting a 1.5% decline:

• January existing-home sales in the Northeast jumped 5.3 percent to an annual rate of 800,000, and are now 6.7 percent above a year ago. The median price in the Northeast was $253,800, which is 2.5 percent above January 2016.


• In the Midwest, existing-home sales decreased 1.5 percent to an annual rate of 1.29 million in January, and are 0.8 percent below a year ago. The median price in the Midwest was $174,900, up 6.5 percent from a year ago.


• Existing-home sales in the South in January rose 3.6 percent to an annual rate of 2.31 million, and are now 3.1 percent above January 2016. The median price in the South was $201,400, up 9.2 percent from a year ago.


• Existing-home sales in the West ascended 6.6 percent to an annual rate of 1.29 million in January, and are now 8.4 percent above a year ago. The median price in the West was $332,300, up 6.8 percent from January 2016.

The median existing-home price was $228,900, up 7.1% from January 2016 ($213,700). January"s price increase was the fastest since last January (8.1%) and marks the 59th consecutive month of year-over-year gains.

Total housing inventory at the end of January rose 2.4 percent to 1.69 million existing homes available for sale, but was still 7.1% lower than a year ago (1.82 million) and has fallen year-over-year for 20 straight months. Unsold inventory is at a 3.6-month supply at the current sales pace (unchanged from December 2016). Properties typically stayed on the market for 50 days in January, down from 52 days in December and considerably more a year ago (64 days). Short sales were on the market the longest at a median of 108 days in January, while foreclosures sold in 51 days and non-distressed homes took 49 days. Thirty-eight percent of homes sold in January were on the market for less than a month.

Metro areas where listings stayed on the market the shortest amount of time in January were San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif., 43 days; San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif., 47 days; San Diego-Carlsbad, Calif., 55 days; Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash., 57 days; and Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tenn., Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif., and Greeley, Colo., all at 58 days.

Looking at the composition of buyers, first-time buyers were 33% of sales in January, which is up from 32% both in December and a year ago. NAR"s 2016 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers revealed that the annual share of first-time buyers was 35% . According to Freddie Mac, the average commitment rate (link is external) for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage decreased slightly in January to 4.15 percent from 4.20 percent in December. The average commitment rate for all of 2016 was 3.65 percent.

Meanwhile, all cash sales continued to rise, and represented 23% of transactions in January, up from 21% in December but down from 26% a year ago. Individual investors, who account for many cash sales, purchased 15 percent of homes in January, unchanged from December and down from 17 percent a year ago. Fifty-nine percent of investors paid in cash in January.  

For now it remains unclear whether the recent spike in transactions will persist once consumer confidence fades away even as higher mortgage rates remain.  A further challenge to existing homes: the gradual disappearance of Chinese and other foreign buyers, which as discussed before, has had a substantial impact on ultra high end housing.

Could Trump's Immigration Ban Cause Another Housing Crash?

How important are immigrants to the U.S. housing market?  At least according to University of Washington economist Jacob Vigdor they could own roughly 12.5% of the housing stock in the U.S. worth about $3.7 trillion in aggregate. 

Here"s the math...there are roughly 320 million people in the U.S. and 125 million houses, or about 2.5 people per household.  Since there are 40 million immigrants living in the U.S., that implies they could own around 16 million homes.  Using an average home price of $225,000 would imply an aggregate household value of ~$3.7 trillion for immigrant families alone.  Per Bloomberg:

Fueling housing demand, immigrants replace baby boomers retiring from the labor force, according to University of Washington
economist Jacob Vigdor.

By his reckoning, the country’s 40 million immigrants add $3.7 trillion to total housing wealth. In Houston’s home county, the newcomers boosted the value of the typical home by $25,000 during the decade ended in 2010. Between 2015 and 2065, according to a Pew Research projection, future immigrants and their descendants will account for 88 percent of the U.S. population increase, or 103 million people.

The question, of course, is whether or not Trump"s immigration crack down, on both illegal immigrants and H1-B visa holders, will reduce demand from immigrant families to such an extent that it actually drives down home prices? 

In San Francisco, an Indian software engineer on a work permit canceled plans to bid on a $900,000 home. In Washington, a Brazilian nonprofit executive passed on a fixer-upper near her office. And, in Mesa, Arizona, a 24-year-old son of undocumented Mexican immigrants won the trust of a bank -- a green light for a mortgage -- but now fears deportation.

President Donald Trump’s immigration policies threaten to crack a foundation of the American economy: the residential real estate market. Legal and otherwise, immigrants, long a pillar of growth in homebuying, are no longer feeling the warm welcome and optimism necessary for their biggest purchase.

“I feel like with one stroke of Trump’s signature everything can be taken away, even all my hard work,” said Juan Rodriguez, the 24-year-old whose parents moved from Mexico when he was 7. He now works full time while earning his college degree.

Certainly real estate brokers are full of circumstantial evidence to suggest a doomsday scenario is inevitable but they"re somewhat of conflicted party.

The 32-year-old Silicon Valley software engineer from India gave up on buying because Trump had so rattled him and his wife. He moved to the U.S. seven years ago and decided to become a homeowner after marrying a biomedical engineer from his home country a few months ago.

The newlyweds have H1-B visas, a program that technology and other companies rely on to hire 85,000 people each year.

“We were about to make some offers,” he said. “But we don’t know what news will come out and how that will affect our jobs.”

Their real estate agent, Nomita Shahani, said a colleague in her office just had a customer with an H-1B visa pull out of a purchase contract in Fremont, California, because of similar concerns.

“All morning clients have been calling me,” Shahani said. “We don’t know which way it will go, but if Trump keeps making it hard to hire people from oversees, the housing market will take a hit.”

The immigrant housing market is often underappreciated, in part, because undocumented workers and the companies that cater to them sometimes like to fly below the radar.  That said, according to the Migration Policy Institute, roughly one-third of all illegal immigrants in the U.S. own a home either directly or through friends and family.  

A third of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. live in a home that they or a family member or friend own, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

Some smaller firms will make loans to the undocumented, with higher interest rates. A few larger lenders such as Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based BB&T Corp. market to dreamers, who can qualify for conventional Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Housing Administration mortgages.

Of course, as we"ve pointed out before, per data from the Pew Research Center, approximately 60% of all illegal immigrants live in just 20 metropolitan areas across the country with the 2007 subprime havens in Florida, Texas, California, Arizona and Las Vegas having more than their "fair share."

Meanwhile, the top 10 metropolitan areas alone account for nearly 50% of illegal immigrants and just three states, California, Texas and New York, make up roughly 37% of the total.

"Fake news" crafted by the mainstream media to sensationalize the economic impacts of Trump"s immigration policies or housing crash 2.0?

How The Obama Administration Quietly Bailed Out Private Equity Landlords At The Expense Of The Middle Class

Authored by Yves Smith, originally posted at NakedCapitalism.com,

So how much did Blackstone promise to give to the Obama library for this huge grift, um, parting gift?

As regular readers may recall, private equity firms piled into buying foreclosed single family homes on the belief that if the government (in this case, Fannie and Freddie) was selling, they wanted to be buying. And they also convinced themselves that technology would somehow allow them to manage geographically dispersed single family homes, which is inherently a hand-on business, more efficiently than mom-and-pop or small scale operators, many of whom had a cost advantage by having some of the principals provide services (as in doing their own plumbing and electrical, so effectively “buying” those services at wholesale prices).

The most disciplined operators did well by getting in early and buying only very discounted properties, so that they had a good cash on cash return on the rentals. It would be attractive for them to hold long term, which would also give them lots of latitude regarding an exit. The lack of time pressure would mean they could sell the homes individually, even through “rent to own” deals with the higher credit quality tenants.

But many of the early entrants kept on buying long after prices were bargain basement, and it was clear due to the press reports of widespread mis-management and tenant abuses that they were cutting corners on maintenance due to having underestimated costs and complexity. Any real estate manager will tell you that running down the asset is foolhardly.

The logical time to start to exit was 2014, but the private equity property owners were whacked by the Bernanke taper tantrum. The most straightforward exit was to turn the properties and the management compan into a REIT, but only a couple of deals got done before that window closed. The next strategy was rental securitization, which we regarded as a terrible idea given the awful track record of mortgage servicing, and that a rental securitization involved much more in the way of moving parts that mortgage servicing. Again, a few transactions got out the door, but the market foundered after a Blackstone securitization saw a big drop in rental income in the quarter immediately following the public offering.

So in its waning hours, the Obama Administration gave a completely unjustified bailout to private equity landlords, that Fannie Mae is guaranteeing the income of all but the bottom tranches of Blackstone’s latest rental securitization.

Let us stress that there is absolutely no policy justification for this. The mission of the government sponsored agencies is to promote home ownership, not to give real estate speculators a “get out of losses or underwhelming returns for free” card. Even worse, rather than forcing the private equity industry to take some well-deserved lumps for miscalculation, it will encourage them to continue to compete with lower-income prospective homeowners for purchasing properties. That means it will be even more difficult for young people to buy homes. Lambert has pointed out repeatedly in his stats wrap in Water Cooler that real estate markets are suffering from a shortage of homes. Having private equity continue to be on the prowl for lower priced properties that they know they can unload from an economic perspective means that the pauperization of the middle class is now official policy.

Even though this guarantee clearly had to have been worked out during the Obama Administration, Blackstone did not make it public until it updated its filing with the SEC this week. It looks an awful lot like the timing was designed to make sure that the disclosure came after the new Trump team was in charge, meaning Obama would be unlikely to face the criticism he deserves, and the Trump Administration would be certain to let the deal stand.

*  *  *

By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street

Invitation Homes, the 2012 buy-to-rent creature of private-equity firm Blackstone, and now owner of 48,431 single-family homes, thus the largest landlord of single-family homes in the US, accomplished another feat: it obtained government guarantees for $1 billion in rental-home mortgage backed securities.

The disclosure came in an amended S-11 filing with the SEC on Monday in preparation for Invitation Homes’ IPO. Invitation Homes bought these properties out of foreclosure and turned them into rental properties, concentrated in 12 urban areas. The IPO filing lists $9.7 billion in single-family properties and $7.7 billion in debt.

Some of this debt will be refinanced with the proceeds from the sale of the $1 billion of government-guaranteed rental-home mortgage backed securities.

The government agency that has agreed to guarantee the “timely payment of principal and interest” of these “Guaranteed Certificates,” as they’re called, is Fannie Mae, one of the government-sponsored entities (GSE) that has been bailed out and taken over by the government during the Financial Crisis.

This is the first time ever that a government-sponsored enterprise has guaranteed single-family rental-home mortgage-backed securities, issued by a huge corporate landlord. It’s an essential step forward in financializing rents: taxpayer backing for funding the biggest landlords.

Government guarantees allow the mega-landlord to sell these securities at a lower yield and thus offer landlords like Blackstone’s entity even cheaper financing for future home purchases, and thus lower costs and greater profit potential.

During the next severe economic downturn, Fannie Mae and its sister Freddie Mac would need between $49 billion and $126 billion in taxpayer bailout money, according to the stress test conducted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The results were released in August last year. So why fret about one more billion?

Blackstone is the trailblazer in financializing rents. It pioneered the post-Financial Crisis buy-to-rent scheme, explicitly encouraged at the time by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Department of the Treasury, as they were trying to bail out the banks by finding willing and able buyers for foreclosed homes – big institutional buyers that could feed at the nearly-free money-trough the Fed had put out there.

And Blackstone was a trailblazer in the next logical step: issuing the first rent-backed structured securities in November 2013. The deal was collateralized by rental income from 3,207 homes. Moody’s, Kroll, and Morningstar – all paid by Blackstone – rated nearly 60% of the securities AAA. The remaining tranches carried lower ratings. The deal flew off the shelf. Now all larger buy-to-rent companies are using rent-backed structured securities for funding.

This too is going to happen with government guarantees on rental-home mortgage-backed securities. It’s a sweet deal for the issuer: low-cost funding, made possible by government guarantees, is always welcome. Other corporate landlords will follow in Blackstone’s footsteps.

Not all of it will be guaranteed by the government: To satisfy “credit risk retention requirements,” Invitation Homes “would purchase and retain the Subordinate Non-Guaranteed Certificates,” amounting to 5%, or $50 million, of the $1 billion in securities. That’s all the cushion the taxpayer has before losses begin to hit home, so to speak.

The GSEs were founded to promote homeownership by subsidizing it with at first implicit, and since the Financial Crisis explicit, government guaranteed mortgages. But this deal represents a big shift: now, in a delicious Wall-Street irony, the government subsidizes the largest landlords and enhances their profits from renting out single-family homes that individual homeowners had lost during the housing collapse and foreclosure crisis.

There is a darker side to corporate ownership of single-family rental homes and the financialization of rents: soaring evictions, according to the Atlanta Fed, which explicitly blames the Fed and Bernanke. Read…  Evictions by Wall-Street Mega-Landlords Soar, Financialization of Rents Cause “Housing Instability”: Atlanta Fed