Canadian Homeowners Take Out HELOCs To Fund Subprime Purchases

Authored by Steve Saretsky via VanCityCondoGuide.com,

The HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) has been a blessing and a curse for Canadian households. While it has helped spur house prices and simultaneously provided consumers the ability to tap into their new found equity, it has also crippled many Canadian households into a debt trap that seems insurmountable.

Between 2000 and 2010, HELOC balances soared from $35 billion to $186 billion, according to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, an average annual growth rate of 20%.

As of 2016, HELOC balances sit at $211 billion, a 500% increase since the year 2000. While also pushing Canadian household debt to incomes to record highs of 168%.

HELOC Debt in Canada

Scott Terrio, a debt consultant, says the situation is a full blown “extend and pretend” meaning borrowers are just continuously refinancing or taking on more and more debt in order to sustain their lifestyle. Canadians can extend their debt repayment terms and pretend to live a lifestyle they can’t otherwise obtain.

What the HELOC has also been able to do is help spur the private lending space which has ultimately supported rising house prices. Seth Daniels of JKD Capital, one of the most astute Canada-Watchers says theres a growing trend where “a homeowner acts as a sub-prime lender by drawing a HELOC at 3% interest only, and lends it to a subprime borrower at 8-12% for one year (interest only).”

This is something i’ve been hearing on an ongoing basis from mortgage brokers and lawyers who help facilitate these deals. Especially since mortgage lending conditions tightened, starting with OSFI’s first mortgage stress test back in November, 2016 which required high ratio borrowers (less than 20% down payment) to qualify for a mortgage at the borrowing rate plus 2%. So basically you’re getting qualified on what you can borrow at 5% even though you’re borrowing at 3%.

This strategy has been bulletproof, because, well, prices can only go up.

The lender makes a juicy return, and the borrower gets his house. The borrower then transitions into a traditional mortgage once his home equity rises after the one year expires.

This has created a situation where, as of September 2017, personal loans secured against residential real estate hit a record high $247 Billion.

Source: Better Dwelling via OSFI

Thanks to an endless supply of new loans (credit) and rising house prices, mortgage arrears rate continue to fall to rock bottom lows.

Source: CMHC

But as Seth Daniels remarked, “Up to a point, the greater the debt growth, the lower the arrears because as they say ‘a rolling loan gathers no loss’. In other words when debt growth is exploding people can find ways of avoiding default by rolling the loan, refinancing, selling the asset, or whatever. So, paradoxically, the default rate will seem to improve when the actual risk in the economy is exploding”.

With another mortgage stress test set to roll out January 1, 2018, this will likely push another swarm of borrowers into the private lending space. We’re already witnessing a huge end of the year push as buyers scramble to secure a home prior to further mortgage clamp downs.

The new mortgage stress test which previously only targeted high ratio borrowers (less than 20% downpayment), will now include low ratio borrowers (more than 20% downpayment) as well. This could be substantial, considering  85% to 90% of all mortgages in Toronto & Vancouver are low-ratio.
(American Readers: Canadians can only secure a mortgage rate for a maximum term of 5 years, meaning a rising interest rate environment is much more impactful)

It’s anticipated to eliminate some 12% of low ratio borrowers while simultaneously reducing borrowing power by 20%.

This could signal a final boom for the private lending space in Canada.

This Michigan Bank Just Brought Back The Zero-Down Mortgage; They"ll Even Cover Your Closing Costs

A small savings bank in Michigan, Flagstar Bank, has come up with a genius, innovative new mortgage product that they believe is going to be great for their investors and low-income housing buyers: the "zero-down mortgage."  What"s better, Flagstar is even offering to pay the closing costs of their low-income future mortgage debtors.  Here"s more from HousingWire:

Under the program, Flagstar will gift the required 3% down payment to the borrower, plus up to $3,500 to be used for closing costs.

 

According to the bank, there is no obligation for borrowers who qualify to repay the down payment gift.

 

The program is available to only certain low- to moderate-income borrowers and borrowers in low- to moderate-income areas throughout Michigan.

 

Borrowers would not have to repay the down payment or closing costs. But a 1099 form to report the income would be issued to the Internal Revenue Service by the bank. So the gifts could be taxable, depending on the borrower’s financial picture.

 

Flagstar said borrowers who might qualify for its new program typically would have an annual income in the range of $35,000 to $62,000. The sales price of the home -- which must be in qualifying areas -- would tend to be in the range of $80,000 to $175,000.

Think it"s too good to be true?  Lakeshia Wiley of Detroit"s west side begs to differ...she recently went through Flagstar to purchase her new home and only had to come up with $350 of her own money.  Per the Detroit Free Press:

Lakeshia Wiley, 35, said she wouldn"t have been able to buy her first home without the Fifth Third Down Payment Assistance program and two other grants, including one from Southwest Solutions.

 

The brick home, built in 1951, is on Detroit"s west side, needed very little work and was priced at $50,000.

 

"I"m very excited every time I think about it. It"s beautiful. I love it," Wiley said.

 

Wiley never expected to be able to buy a home, though, because she has had a hard time saving for a down payment.

 

"I didn"t think I"d be able to do it," said the single mother who has two sons, ages 17 and 10, and a daughter, age 6. She works at a Detroit pharmacy.

 

Thanks to the down payment assistance and the grants, Wiley was able to buy her home in April. She had to bring less than $350 to the table at closing.

The Flagstar program is available in 18 counties in Michigan, and could be used for certain homes in Detroit and Flint, along with other cities.

Of course, we would highly encourage Flagstar to take a look back into ancient history for case studies on what happened the last time banks started peddling "innovative" mortgage products.  Here"s a summary of the Lehman Brothers case study:

Ironically, South Park also did some fascinating research on the topic:

Hedge Fund Homebuyers In The Hamptons Already Have A Plan To Game Trump"s Mortgage Cap

One of the key changes in the House GOP tax bill was to implement a cap on home interest deductions to the first $500,000 worth of mortgage debt and eliminate  interest deductions from second homes.  Of course, given active opposition from some very powerful realtor and homebuilder lobbying groups, it"s unclear whether the changes will find their way into the final tax bill.  But, at least according to Bloomberg, New York"s "millionaire, billionaire, private jet owning" hedge fund managers aren"t waiting around to find out and are already taking steps to game any potential tax changes.

Out in the Hamptons, Wall Street’s favored beach resort on Long Island, brokers and buyers already have a workaround for a tax-plan provision under consideration in Congress that would take away the mortgage-interest deduction for second homes.

 

A client of Brown Harris Stevens broker Jessica von Hagn who works at a hedge fund decided to turn the vacation home he’s buying into an investment property by setting up a limited liability company. That will allow him to deduct the interest and earn rental income at the height of the season from the modern home on Bridgehampton’s Lumber Lane, with four bedrooms, three baths and a swimming pool on an acre of land.

 

For the buyer: problem solved. For the Hamptons market: more high-end vacation properties getting listed as rentals, more competition and, most likely, falling rents.

 

“If you aren’t able to take advantage of the mortgage deduction for your second home, you’ll see more people putting their homes on the market and the inventory will grow,” von Hagn said. “There’s only a certain number of renters every season and we just keep adding more and more inventory.”

 

Whatever happens with the tax plan, the Bridgehampton buyer isn’t worried. He’s paying more than $2 million for his 3,400-square-foot vacation home, and though he’ll end up spending less time there than he had originally hoped, he figures the rent he’ll earn will more than cover his property taxes and help pay the mortgage.

Of course, it"s not just the Hamptons that would be impacted by the GOP tax bill as brokers in second-home markets across the U.S., from Cape Cod in Massachusetts to Lake Tahoe, California, are bracing for a hit.

A House version of the tax plan, passed by the Ways and Means Committee on Thursday, cuts the mortgage-interest deduction on second homes, and on home-equity loans, which buyers sometimes take out on their primary residence to pay for a vacation property. The Senate’s plan, details of which were released late Thursday, also does away with the home-equity deduction, but preserves the break for second-home mortgages.

That said, realtors, like Tim Bailey in Cape Cod, will undoubtedly call on his powerful lobbying groups to preserve his livelihood which "relies on selling second homes."

Even before any change is passed by Congress, the possibility that the second-home mortgage deduction will be gone is already changing the calculus for some buyers, said Timothy Bailey, a broker with John C. Ricotta & Associates Inc. in the affluent Cape Cod town of Chatham.

 

Bailey said an agent told him that one of her deals, for a $1.5 million vacation property, fell apart over the tax plan.

 

“My whole living relies on selling second homes,” Bailey said. “Because it’s a discretionary purchase, if they lose that deduction, it might be more attractive to rent.”

Of course, as we pointed out recently, this is just more unwelcome news for realtors in a market where buyers favoring lower-priced homes, you know those shacks costing less than $2 million, continued to rise in the third quarter, according to the latest Douglas Elliman Real-Estate Report. This left the high end of the market in a double-bind as supplies of new homes hit the market while sales tapered off...

Purchasers agreed to pay more than the asking price in 10 percent of deals for properties under $3.3 million -- this quarter’s definition of “non-luxury” homes, making up the bottom 90 percent of the market, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. It was the biggest share of transactions with bidding wars since the firms began tracking the data in the second quarter of 2016.

 

In their zeal for lower-end deals, buyers snapped up condos as well. Those units -- with a median sale price of $567,500 -- were available for just 97 days on average before going under contract, the fastest clip in six years of record-keeping. On the high-end, buyers showed less interest in acquiring luxury homes than sellers did in listing them. Inventory in that top 10 percent of the market jumped 22 percent, the biggest pile-up in two years.

 

“The market is looking towards those smaller, more manageable homes,” said Carl Benincasa, a regional vice president at Douglas Elliman who oversees sales in the Hamptons. “That’s certainly been a trend we’ve been observing.”

Meanwhile, the real question, at this point, is will this extreme show to aggression towards America"s billionaire class be allowed to stand by the Senate?  What say you?

The Republican Tax Plan Will Crush These Housing Markets

For the past few weeks, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have screamed to anyone who would listen that the GOP tax plan is nothing more than a tax break for millionaires and an attack on middle class working families.  But, as the Wall Street Journal points out this morning, America"s millionaire, billionaire, private jet owners living in expensive urban areas are set to lose "bigly" if Trump"s $500,000 cap on the mortgage interest deduction survives.

But in the priciest markets, concentrated in some of the nation’s largest coastal cities, the impact could be significant. In the San Jose, Calif., metropolitan area, 75% of new mortgage loans thus far in 2017 were for more than $500,000, according to an analysis by CoreLogic Inc., a housing data provider. The median home price there is more than $1 million, and even small starter homes can climb well above the proposed cap.

 

In the San Francisco metro area, 60% of new loans were for more than $500,000, while in Los Angeles and San Diego, the figures were 44% and 37%, respectively.

 

The impact wouldn’t be limited to California. In Honolulu, 48% of loans were greater than $500,000, while the figures for the New York area and Seattle were 22% and 25%, respectively.

 

An analysis by ATTOM Data Solutions yielded similar results. In the Washington, D.C., area, 35% of purchase and refinance loans in 2017 thus far were for more than $500,000. In Hawaii, 15% of loans fell into that category, while in California 12% did.

In addition to capping the mortgage interest deduction, the current GOP bill also limits the amount of property taxes that households can deduct to $10,000 annually.

Not surprisingly, the assault on McMansions has angered the realtor lobby which we"re certain will fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo.

Jeff Barnett, a California realtor and vice chairman of the National Association of Realtors’ large-firm real-estate services committee, said his area will be hit “very, very hard” if the tax bill passes. Even if corporate tax cuts help boost the economy, he doesn’t think that will be enough to compensate.

 

“You’ve taken away so many incentives for housing, they can’t spend” the money from any extra economic growth, he said.

Of course, as we pointed out earlier this week (see: Trump Is About To Crush Home Prices In Counties That Voted For Hillary: Here"s Why), Clinton won the vote in the top 45 counties in the country with the highest median home prices which has resulted in rampant speculation that the mortgage cap is nothing more than a clever punishment levied on Democratic voters.

As Dennis Lee calculated, "assuming that all of these homeowners are taxed at a marginal rate of 39.6%, we find that the increase in tax burden during the first 12 months of homeownership driven solely by the mortgage interest and property tax deduction caps varies from $0 for the county with the 20th highest median home price (San Miguel County, Colorado) to approximately $7,200 for the highest-priced county (San Francisco County, California)." Barclays" conclusion: these counties - all of which are largely pro-Clinton - would need a 0-11% decline in their median home prices to keep the after-tax monthly mortgage and property tax payments the same for would-be buyers.

Of course, only time will tell whether the swamp (a.k.a. "The National Association of Realtors" in this case) will allow this particular component of the GOP tax bill to survive...

Foreclosed $51 Million "Billionaire"s Row" Penthouse Sells At A 30% Discount

Kola Aluko’s posh penthouse apartment in One57, one of Manhattan’s most expensive luxury towers, has finally sold after months of delays in what New York realtors agree is the most expensive residential foreclosure in city history.

The sale price - a paltry $36 million - suggests that the stress seen in the ultra-high-end real estate market in New York City has only worsened as buyers brace for a glut of new luxury buildings coming online in the coming years.

The buyer of unit 97, one of five bidders aside from the bank, wouldn’t answer questions, and his name wasn’t immediately available. Aluko purchased the building through shell companies. Recently, his assets have been seized by authorities in several countries as he’s wanted for bribing officials to receive lucrative contracts with his country’s state-owned oil company, Bloomberg reported.

Aluko bought the 6,240-square-foot (580-square-meter) residence in December 2014 for $50.9 million, according to New York City records. The sale yielded a compound annual return of about minus 11%.

And in September 2015, he took out an unusually large mortgage with an unusually short term: one year. The $35.3 million mortgage was obtained from Luxembourg-based lender Banque Havilland SA. The full payment of the loan was due one year later, according to court documents filed in connection with the foreclosure. The borrower failed to repay, and now Banque Havilland has forced a sale to recoup its funds.

“It’s probably the most-expensive foreclosure we’ve ever seen in luxury development,” said Donna Olshan, president of high-end Manhattan brokerage Olshan Realty Inc. “I don’t know of a foreclosure that’s larger than that."

WSJ reported in August that luxury condos in Billionaires’ Row have faced steep discounts as building owners have struggled to find buyers.

An analysis of condominium records shows the average discount on nine contracts signed at the Baccarat in 2016 was 22% below the peak asking prices of 2014, when the market was red hot. These include the sprawling 7,300-square-foot penthouse plus terrace that sold in June 2016 for $42.6 million, soon after the asking price was from $60 million to $54 million. Overall that amounted to a 29% price reduction.

One57 went on the market in 2011, and as of August there were still five units for sale. As we’ve previously reported, foreclosure proceedings were started in January. An auction scheduled for July was delayed after a creditor claimed Aluko owed it about $83 million for gasoline and jet fuel.
 

GOP Tax Plan "Talking Point" Highlights Released

Moments ago, the GOP released the "talking point" highlights of the republican tax plan which, as previewed earlier this morning, will keep the 20% corporate tax cut as permanent, and which allegedly will assure that a family of 4 making $59,000 will get a $1,182 tax cut.

As discussed previously, the bill keeps a top rate of 39.6% for the highest-earners and doubles the standard deduction for middle class families. It expands the child tax credit to $1,600 from $1,000 and will not make any changes to the 401(k) plans. The bill also “makes no changes to the popular retirement savings options that Americans have today — including 401(k)’s and Individual Retirement Accounts, or I.R.A.s. Americans will be able to continuing making both traditional, pretax contributions and ‘Roth’ contributions in the way that works best for them.”

So far so good; where there will be problems however, is that the bill also includes the repeal of an itemized deduction for medical expenses, a key provision for households with extraordinary health-care costs. It also repeals the tax credit for adoption and the deduction of student-loan interest. The bill also limits the home mortgage interest deduction: for new home purchases interest would be deductible only on loans up to $500,000, down from $1 million, although existing loans would be grandfathered.

A key issue will be the treatment of the state and local tax deduction, which lawmakers are proposing to cap at $10,000. That will not be enough for Republicans in some high-tax states, where middle-class families make heavy use of the deduction. As the NYT notes, "the compromise, as it had been sketched out this week, would preserve the deduction for property taxes, but not for state and local income taxes, and it appeared as if there would be a cap on the deduction. But at first glance, it did not appear as if that was enough to win over all of the New York and New Jersey members."

Here are the most notable changes:

• Lowers individual tax rates for low- and middle-income Americans to Zero, 12%, 25%, and 35%; keeps tax rate for those making over $1 million at 39.6%


• Increases the standard deduction  from $6,350 to $12,000 for individuals and $12,700 to $24,000 for married couples.


• Establishing a new Family Credit, which includes expanding the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to $1,600


• Preserving the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit


• Preserves the Earned Income Tax Credit


• Preserves the home mortgage interest deduction for existing mortgages and maintains the home mortgage interest deduction for newly purchased homes up to $500,000, half the current $1,000,000


• Continues to allow people to write off the cost of state and local property taxes up to $10,000


• Retains popular retirement savings options such as 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts


• Repeals the Alternative Minimum Tax


• Lowers the corporate tax rate to 20% – down from 35%


• Reduces the tax rate on business income to no more than 25%


• Establishes strong safeguards to distinguish between individual wage income and “pass-through” business income 


• Allows businesses to immediately write off the full cost of new equipment


• Retains the low-income housing tax credit

A visual summary of the new tax brackets:

And the full document:

Manhattan Office Bubble Fizzles Without Big Chinese Buyers

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

Sales volume in Q3 plunges 67% from a year ago.

Manhattan, the biggest most expensive trophy market in the US for commercial real estate, used to be particularly appealing to exuberant foreign investors, such as Chinese conglomerates. But in the third quarter, sales volume of large office properties (minimum $5 million and 50,000 sq. ft.) plunged 67% year-over-year to $991 million, the lowest in five years. It was down 90% from the peak in Q1 2015.

“Q3 2017 might signal a return to normalcy for the highly sought-after Manhattan market,” the report by Yardi Systems’ Commercial Café commented.

This chart shows the dollar sales volume of large office properties. The $991 million in Q3 is rounded up to $1 billion:

The number of closed deals plunged 40% to just six transactions, according to Commercial Café. That’d down 71% from the peak in Q1 2015:

The average price per square foot fell 19% year-over-year and is down 32% from the peak in Q1 2016, but is up from Q1 2017 and about flat with Q3 2015.

As this chart shows, the average price per square foot varies based on a number of factors, including seasonality, but with a trend since the peak in Q1 2016 that doesn’t look promising:

The largest deal was the $465-million sale of 375 Hudson, a 19-story, 1 million-square-foot Class A property, acquired by Trinity Real Estate, the real estate arm of Trinity Church (51% stake), Norges Bank (48% stake), and Hines Interests (1% stake).

What’s sorely missing? The big transactions at inflated prices by Chinese buyers, such as the $2.2 billion purchase in May of 245 Park Avenue by the Chinese conglomerate HNA Group that had boosted Q2 sales. The deal was more than twice the size of the six transactions in Q3 combined. At $1,282 per square foot, it was also “among the highest price-per-pound for this type of asset” ever recorded in Manhattan, as it has been described. Those trophy purchases by Chinese conglomerates really moved the needle.

But now the large Chinese conglomerates that had considered the Manhattan office market their trophy hunting grounds were absent.

This absence follows the crackdown by China’s State Council on cross-border transactions. Its guidelines spell out what Chinese companies can and cannot acquire overseas to “promote healthy growth of overseas investment and prevent risks,” as the guidelines said.

Some transactions are still desirable according to the guidelines, with a big emphasis on China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” in Central Asia and on companies that “take the lead to export China’s superior technology and equipment, upgrade the nation’s research and manufacturing ability, and make up the shortage of energy and resources through prudent cooperation in oil, gas and other resources.”

Other overseas investments will be “restricted,” including “real estate,” “hotels,” and “entertainment.”

So here we go. Over the past few years, and building up into a powerful crescendo that culminated just a few months ago, Chinese conglomerates have been buying up whatever they could get their hands on with precariously borrowed money. But now they’re being reined in by Chinese authorities who are worried about the soaring debt levels of those conglomerates and about their acquisitions at inflated prices and about a financial crisis that these debt levels could trigger when they go bad. And trophy markets, such as Manhattan, are among the first to feel the effects.

How Many Hours Americans Need To Work To Pay Their Mortgage

When it comes to the cost of living in cities, a general rule of thumb is that housing prices are much higher in the country’s economic and population hubs, especially in the cities along the coasts.

As Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes, particularly in recent years, prices have been pushed sky-high in places like New York City or San Francisco through a combination of limited supply of new homes, increasing demand, shifting demographics, and government regulations.

PUTTING IT INTO PERSPECTIVE

Today’s visualization from HowMuch.net applies a common denominator to compare 97 of the biggest cities in the United States. Using a measure of median household income against the average mortgage payment in each city, we get a gauge of how many hours must be worked each month just to pay down the house.

The visualization uses data from the U.S. Census for household income and Zillow for median home listing price, while calculating mortgage payments based on a standard 30-year term.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

THE RESULTS

Using the above method to compare the amount of hours it takes to pay down a monthly mortgage, we see some interesting contrasts in the country.

Here are the five most expensive cities in the United States for housing:

With about 170 hours in a normal work month, the average people in these cities are spending 50% or more of their income just to pay down their mortgages. It’s worst in New York City and Los Angeles, where at least 65% of income is going towards housing.

These cities stand in stark contrast to the five cheapest cities based on hours of work needed:

In a city like Memphis, TN it takes only 18.4 hours of work a month to pay down the average mortgage. That’s equal to only about 10% of monthly household income.

COASTAL DISPARITY

Interestingly, even though coastal hubs have high prices relative to the cities in the middle of the country, they differ quite widely against each other. This discrepancy does not necessarily show in terms of ranking, but more in terms of the actual hours of work needed.

Washington, D.C., for example, requires less than half the hours of work to pay down a mortgage than Los Angeles or New York City. Meanwhile, a popular west coast hub like Seattle only needs 72.8 hours in comparison to New York’s 113.5 hours.

Long-Term Mortgage Delinquencies Seriously Under-Reported

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Keith Jurow, a real estate analyst and author of the Capital Preservation Real Estate Report, pinged me a few days ago with his analysis that suggests long-term mortgage delinquencies are seriously under-reported.

Hi Mish,

I thought you might be interested in the important clarification I just received from my contact at the NY State Dept. of Financial Services.

A few weeks ago, I sent you the latest update (attached again) of pre-foreclosure notices sent to delinquent homeowners in NYC and LI. I had noticed that 80% were listed as delinquent for less than 60 days. I asked my contact why that percentage was so high when he had been telling me for several years that over 40% of these notices were repeat notices – sent to long-term delinquents.

His response was that for repeat notices, the mortgage servicers often provided the same information as on the original notice. For example, if a repeat notice was sent two years after the initial one, the length of delinquency was not changed from that first one. That was why a second notice where the borrower might be three years delinquent could show a delinquency of 60 days.

This clarification confirmed my belief that many – if not most – of the borrowers were now delinquent for several years.

Keith Jurow

New York Loan Delinquencies

Out of 65,523 loans, a whopping 52,218 supposedly fall into the 60-days or less delinquent bucket.

90-Day Pre-foreclosure Notices Filed with the NY Department of Financial Services

100% of those 65,523 delinquencies generated a 90-day pre-foreclosure notice.

Case closed.

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...

Realtors Warn Of "Another Housing Crash" If Mortgage Tax Deductions Are Scrapped

After failing miserably if their efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans are set to shift their legislative agenda to focus on tax reform when they get back from their generous month-long August recess (taxpayers are such great employers).  Among other things, proposed changes to the personal tax code would include eliminating nearly all tax write-offs, including those for state and local taxes, and instead doubling the standard deduction.

Of course, potentially no industry would be more impacted by such a move as the housing market which has sparked a slight panic at the National Association of Realtors (NAR).  As Reuters points out this morning, roughly 30 million taxpayers taxpayers claim mortgage interest deductions totaling some $70 billion each year which provides a huge incentive to own a home.   

The National Association of Realtors issued an "August Recess Talking Points" circular imploring members to remind lawmakers that "Homeowners must be treated fairly in tax reform" to avoid "another housing crash."

The group cited a report it commissioned from PwC that estimated home values could quickly dive more than 10 percent if the tax plan becomes law.

Currently, about 30 million taxpayers claim the mortgage interest deduction, with about $70 billion in total claims, according to Robert Dietz, an economist with the National Association of Homebuilders.

Estimates suggest more than half of taxpayers would stop itemizing under the proposed plan, Dietz said, warning that this would create a large ripple effect through the economy. He said people in early years of a mortgage would suffer most, along with prospective home buyers.

Meanwhile, talking points distributed by NAR, intended to give realtors around the country ammunition against their elected officials while they"re "vacationing" in their districts, warns that tampering with the mortgage deduction could cause "home values everywhere to plunge" resulting in many homeowners once again going "under water" on their primary asset.

-  Proposals limiting tax incentives for homeownership would cause home values everywhere to plunge. Estimates provided by PwC show that values could fall in the short run by more than 10 percent if a Blueprint-like tax reform plan were enacted. The drop could be even larger in high-cost areas.   It may take years for home values to rebound from such a significant decrease.

-  With a reduction in values of this size, homeowners with relatively small amounts of equity would again see their mortgages go under water, finding they owe more than what their home is worth. For many, this will lead to defaults, foreclosures, or short sales, creating havoc for families, neighborhoods and communities.

-  The home is the most valuable asset for most owners. Millions of families have built equity for years with the hope of using it to help pay for retirement or college for children. Many of these dreams would evaporate.

But it"s not just the housing market that would be impacted as the CEO of the American Red Cross warned that removing charitable deductions would be "devastating" for non-profit organizations that currently collect some $13 billion worth of tax-deductible donations annually.

Charitable organizations are not arguing against increasing the standard deduction. But they are asking members of Congress to consider creating a “universal deduction,” so taxpayers taking the standard deduction can get additional credit for donations without itemizing.

Taxpayers claim an estimated $13 billion each year in charitable deductions. Charities fear giving would plummet if the standard deduction were doubled without creating a universal deduction.

Gail McGovern, president and CEO of the American Red Cross, said reducing charitable deductions would be “devastating.”

But it"s probably no "yuge" deal...the U.S. housing stock is only worth about $30 trillion so we"re sure the homebuilders and lenders can absorb a small $3 trillion valuation loss, right?

Detroit Is Demolishing Homes With Federal Money Meant "To Save Them"

Contrary to popular perception, not all of the money approved as part of the federal government’s emergency effort to save the American financial system in the fall of 2008 went to the big banks. Some of it – nearly $10 billion, all told – went to support the government’s “hardest hit” program, meant to help forestall foreclosures in 18 states.

And unsurprisingly, nearly a decade after the program was signed into law, government investigators are finding that much of this money was squandered by state governments. Money initially earmarked to help troubled homeowners struggling with underwater mortgages was instead spent on demolitions meant to boost prices of surrounding homes and help ward off crime in city neighborhoods. Except the money was often squandered by state governments, disproportionately robbing poor citizens in cities like Detroit of a program meant to save them from homelessness.

As the Detroit Metro Times reports, Detroit"s decade-long wave of tax and mortgage foreclosures has wiped out large swaths of the city"s neighborhoods as Wayne County continues to seize thousands of occupied homes a year. The city"s neediest homeowners were supposed to receive federal assistance to save their homes as part of the Treasury Department"s seven-year-old Hardest Hit Fund. But the State of Michigan squandered its money by adopting unnecessarily stringent requirements — according to a scathing audit issued in January by the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP).

In 2010, Michigan originally received nearly $500 million to provide loans to eligible homeowners who were facing tax or mortgage foreclosure. But the program, called Step Forward Michigan, rejected funding for about 5,000 Detroiters, while assisting more than 2,000 homeowners who earned at least $70,000 a year. That number eventually swelled to $761 million, and of that amount, half was committed to demolitions.

As a result, more than 80 percent of Detroiters making $30,000 or less a year were denied assistance to save their homes from tax or mortgage foreclosure. By contrast, the other 17 states with Hardest Hit Funds rejected 53 percent of homeowners making less than $30,000.

"Michigan and Ohio are among the states that have the most TARP dollars set aside, but also have some of the highest percentage of people turned down for the Hardest Hit Fund," the audit reads.”

SIGTARP said Michigan"s high rejection rate "raises questions about whether these programs are as effective and efficient as they can be to reach those people who are the hardest hit." But perhaps even more galling than the state government’s decision to turn away needy homeowners, is how Michigan instead became the first state in 2013 to demolish homes using money intended to save them.

As the paper explains, the idea was that demolitions would revitalize neighborhoods by increasing the property values of surrounding houses, attracting new homeowners, and reducing crime rates.

The plan was only marginally successful: A report commissioned by the Skillman Foundation and Rock Ventures found that each demolition in Detroit increased the value of adjacent homes by only 4.2 percent. Since 2013, Detroit has razed more than 10,000 blighted and abandoned houses using the federal funds. But in its criticism of Michigan’s program, the Treasury Department investigators didn’t focus on its effectiveness, or the unconscionable notion that Michigan decided to destroy homes instead of saving homeowners from being put out on the street.

Instead, Michigan and several other states’ decision to use the money for demolitions has come under fire because the federal government created no rules or controls to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, according to a 2016 SIGTARP investigation.

Their negligence allowed the program to be riddled with waste and fraud, as contractors started raising their bids, and the bidding process for demolitions has become rife with bid-rigging and other tactics for fraud and abuse that were once famously associated with the American mafia. Soaring demolition costs in the state caught the attention of federal investigators, and now the Detroit Land Bank"s handling of the demolitions has become the subject of an ongoing federal grand jury investigation.

“The investigation found that demolition programs are ‘vulnerable to the risk of unfair competitive practices such as bid rigging, contract steering, and other closed door contracting processes’ because the "Treasury conducts no oversight" and therefore cannot determine whether the cost of demolition is ‘necessary and reasonable.’

The SIGTARP report added that "the vulnerability of the Hardest Hit Fund to fraud, waste, and abuse significantly increased with blight elimination, which Treasury could have mitigated, but did not."

In a report to Congress in April, a federal inspector slammed the state of Michigan for "skyrocketing demolition costs," indicating that the average price to raze a house had increased 90 percent, from $9,266 to $17,643 by the second quarter of 2016.

The Detroit Land Bank"s handling of the demolitions has become the subject of an ongoing federal grand jury investigation. The Land Bank declined to comment for this story.”

Foreclosure experts question why Michigan, one of the states hardest hit by the Great Recession, would prioritize demolition over foreclosure prevention. Over the past decade, more than one in three homes in Detroit, a total of about 140,000, have been foreclosed because of unpaid taxes or mortgage defaults. Yet, requirements for the TARP relief program, a program that most homeowners probably aren’t even aware of, have been incredibly strict.

"Many of the houses now being demolished could have been saved if there wasn"t a lack of preventing foreclosures," says Jerry Paffendorf, co-founder and CEO of Loveland Technologies, a Detroit-based property and mapping company. "If you don"t prevent foreclosures, you"re going to have more houses to demolish."

Michigan’s eligibility requirements were unusually strict, according to the report. For example, the state declines assistance to homeowners whose income was not cut by at least 20 percent, unlike other states that don’t require a specific pay reduction to be eligible. Michigan also denies funding to homeowners whose unemployment benefits ran out more than a year ago.

"The Michigan requirement does not reward a responsible worker whose paycheck was cut more than one year ago and has exhausted unemployment benefits, savings, family help, or low-paying part-time work to pay their mortgage," SIGTARP wrote in January 2017.

And while the Metro Times doesn’t bother asking why Michigan would favor contractors over poor urban homeowners, for anyone familiar with how statewide political campaigns are financed, the answer should be obvious. State contractors are often major donors to politicians. So, is it any surprise that politicians would favor their benefactors over a handful of voters?
 

BOE Warns Popular 35-Year Mortgages Shackle Consumers With "Lifetime Of Debt"

Consumers in the UK have been on a credit binge since the Bank of England cut its benchmark interest rate to an all-time low as investors braced for the widely anticipated economic shock of Brexit – a shock that, unsurprisingly, has yet to arrive, despite warnings from the academic establishment that a "leave" vote would trigger an imminent economic catastrophe. And now, with total credit growth rising at 10% a year, the BOE is warning that the increase in unsecured lending is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

While the central bank is less concerned with mortgage debt than credit-card debt and other types of consumer credit, some at the bank are beginning to worry that the growing demand for long-term mortgages will shackle borrowers with a lifetime of debt, according to the Telegraph.

“British families are signing up for a lifetime of debt with almost one in seven borrowers now taking out mortgages of 35 years or more, official figures show.

Rapid house price growth has ­encouraged borrowers to sign longer mortgage deals as a way of reducing monthly payments and easing affordability pressures.

Bank of England data shows 15.75pc of all new mortgages taken out in the first quarter of 2017 were for terms of 35 years or more. While this is slightly down from the record high of 16.36pc at the end of 2016, it has climbed from just 2.7pc when records began in 2005.”

The steady rise has triggered alarm bells at the BOE, prompting regulators to warn that the trend risks storing up “problem[s] for the future” if lenders ignore the growing share of households prepared to borrow into retirement. Indeed, bank figures show one in five mortgages today are between 30 and 35 years, up from below 8% in 2005, as the traditional 25-year mortgage becomes less popular.

There’s also the unaffordability question. That borrowers are opting for longer mortgage terms means they’re finding rent and mortgages are growing increasingly unaffordable, a worrying sign as credit expands.

David Hollingworth, a director at mortgage broker London & Country, said the trend showed that an increasing share of borrowers were “struggling with affordability pressures, and deciding that lengthening the term will offer leeway” as house price growth continues to outpace pay rises.

Sam Woods, the chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority, has said policymakers are watching developments closely.

“If lenders become too narrowly preoccupied with the profile of the loan in the first five years” and not look at the entire profile of the loan when assessing affordability “this could store up a problem for the future,” he said in a speech.

While interest rates are expected to stay low, the pound’s 15% drop against the dollar since the last year is driving up the price of consumer goods, adding to the pressure on borrowers. Prices of consumer staples are growing at an annualized rate of 3%, far more than interest rates on savings accounts.

 

Canadians Brace For A "Perfect Storm" Brewing In Housing Market

We"ve spent a fair amount of time discussing Canada"s housing market over the past several months as Chinese money laundering operations have sprouted up bubbles all over the place.  Here"s a modest sampling of our recent work:

But, as the Globe and Mail notes today, there could very well be a "perfect storm" brewing in several Canadian housing markets as the result of extreme pricing bubbles, over-indebted consumers, a major tightening of mortgage rules and the prospect of rising rates.

On the regulatory front, Canada"s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), is considering new rules that would require lenders to effectively "stress-test" borrowers to confirm they would be in compliance with credit metrics even if rates were to rise 200 bps.  From a practical standpoint, such a move would immediately remove roughly 20% of the average Canadian"s home buying power.

Canada’s banking regulator (OSFI) is proposing that anyone who gets a mortgage at a bank or bank-funded lender prove they can afford a rate that is at least 200-basis-points higher than their actual rate.

A similar debt-ratio “stress test” is already in place for folks getting a default insured mortgage, as well as most variable-rate and short-term borrowers.

If OSFI’s change goes through as planned, otherwise credit-worthy borrowers would qualify for roughly 18 per cent less mortgage, other things equal. This one change would have more of an impact to mortgage shoppers than any Bank of Canada rate hike in history.

Of course, with mortgage rates at multi-decade lows, they likely only have one direction to go.  Moreover, as rates rise, it will only serve to amplify the impacts of the proposed OSFI regulations noted above.

If you believe the Bank of Canada’s hints and bond market probabilities, there’s a real chance we’ll see higher floating rates as soon as next week’s rate meeting, or at its meeting in September. (Albeit, Thursday’s OSFI news could limit the BoC’s rate hike plans.)

As for fixed mortgage rates, they’ve already shot up on the back of a 50-basis-point surge in bond yields since June 6. RBC, Canada’s de facto leader in setting mortgage rates, hiked most of its advertised fixed rates by 20 basis points on Thursday morning. Most other lenders have done the same and it may be only the first of multiple moves.

All of which leads the Globe & Mail to ask "what should Canadian consumers do now?" 

Well, luckily for our northern neighbors, we would point out that the U.S. had a similar housing bubble issue a few years back...here"s a hint on what you should do next...

These Are The US Cities Where Graduates Struggle The Most With Student Debt

With tuition at private colleges routinely eclipsing the $60,000 mark, it’s more important than ever for recent graduates to settle in cities where circumstances allow them to start paying down their massive debt piles as quickly as possible.

That means a city with strong job offers, but where the cost of living isn’t so high as to siphon off a young worker’s earnings.

To that end, Credible crunched the numbers for the country’s 23 most populous cities and ranked them according to how much younger workers struggle with student-debt payments. The lender, using data from 9,000 of its own borrowers, took the average income in each of those cities with the average monthly housing payment and their average monthly student loan payment, and found that the city where students struggle the most is San Jose, Calif., followed by Fort Worth, Texas and Boston, Mass.

In Dallas, Jacksonville, and Houston, the cities that topped Credible’s ranking for the most affordable cities for recent grads, borrowers have more of their income left over after paying their monthly loan and housing bills as compared to the other cities on the list. More than 70% of US students borrow money to attend college, with the average debt load among this cohort amounting to about $37,000.

But even in these cities, “nearly 27 percent of borrowers’ average monthly income is eaten up by their monthly housing payment and their monthly loan payment alone. That doesn’t even take into account other expenses such as taxes, food, or transportation," according to Credible.

It’s also not that far removed from the more than 30 percent of borrowers’ average monthly income dedicated to loan and housing payments in the cities at the top of the list.

But this isn’t that surprising. While monthly housing costs tend to be slightly higher in the least affordable cities compared with the other cities, the margin of difference isn’t large – suggesting that, while affordability might be one factor that grads take into account when choosing where to live, high rents don’t necessarily prevent people from flocking to certain cities.

New York's "Billionaires Row" Suffers Biggest Foreclosure In History

In the latest sign that NYC’s ultra-high end property market is on the verge of imploding after a wave of overly aggressive development, another luxury condo at Manhattan’s One57 tower, a member of “Billionaire’s Row,” a group of high-end towers clustered along the southern edge of Central Park, has gone into foreclosure - the second in the span of a month.

The 6,240-square-foot (580-square-meter) full-floor penthouse in question, One57’s Apartment 79, sold for $50.9 million in December 2014, making it the eighth-priciest in the building.

“It’s probably the most-expensive foreclosure we’ve ever seen in luxury development,” said Donna Olshan, president of high-end Manhattan brokerage Olshan Realty Inc. “I don’t know of a foreclosure that’s larger than that.”

According to Bloomberg, the shell company that purchased the property took out an unusually large mortgage and promised to repay in full a year later.

In September 2015, the company took out a $35.3 million mortgage from lender Banque Havilland SA, based in Luxembourg. The full payment of the loan was due one year later, according to court documents filed in connection with the foreclosure.

The borrower failed to repay, and now Banque Havilland is forcing a sale to recoup the funds, plus interest.

And, in what’s become a strong contender for the “no sh*t” quote of the day, a spokeswoman for Extell Developments, the developer that built One57, said there" s a lesson to be learned from this unfortunate situation.

“This shows that too much leverage is probably not wise,” Anna LaPorte, an Extell spokeswoman, said of the most recent default.

A June 14 auction was scheduled for a 56th-floor apartment at the same tower. That condo was purchased in July 2015 for $21.4 million. Public records have yet to reveal any transfer of ownership for that property.

Investors across the NYC property spectrum should take note; prices in Manhattan and Brooklyn have risen so quickly they’ve effectively pushed marginal buyers out of the market and forced renters to devote a greater share of their income to housing. Today, more than 30% of Americans pay half their income in rent - the highest percentage in decades.

And with more investors in the city concentrating on luxury properties, some ultra-luxury buildings like One57 are struggling with unsustainable vacancy rates of nearly 40%.

Until last month, no apartments on Billionaires’ Row, which also includes 432 Park Ave., had been subject to a foreclosure auction, according to PropertyShark. The loss of a Manhattan residential property to creditors is a rare event, regardless of the unit"s price-tag: Only 27 new residential foreclosures in the borough in the first quarter.

Could this be the start of a trend? We think so. Which leads us to our next question: How, exactly, does one short the luxury real-estate market?

We also look forward to The Left deciding that a probe into this transaction is warranted, just in case it was some complex way to transfer Russian funds to Trump... (only half-kidding).

Good Luck Getting Out Of That Subprime Auto Loan When Used Car Prices Crash

We"ve written frequently in recent months about the coming subprime auto crisis which will very likely be prompted by a wave of off-lease vehicles that will flood the market with used inventory over the coming years.  In fact, Morgan Stanley recently predicted that the surge in used inventory could result in as much as a 50% crash in used car prices over the next couple of years which would, in turn, put further pressure on the new car market which has already resorted to record incentive spending to maintain volumes.

Here are just a couple of our most recent notes on the topic:

• Signs Of An Auto Bubble: Soaring Delinquencies In These 266 Subprime ABS Deals Can"t Be Good


• New Warning Signs Emerge For Subprime Auto Securitizations


• Auto Lending Update - Someone Please Explain How This Is Not A Bubble

Of course, while pretty much anyone has been able to purchase that brand new BMW of their dreams over the past 5 years...courtesy of a surge in subprime lending volumes....

 

...getting out of those loans once used car prices crash and millions of Americans are left with massive negative equity balances won"t be quite so easy...just ask Yvette Harris who is still making payments on her 1997 Mitsubishi nearly a decade after her car was repossessed.  Per the New York Times:

More than a decade after Yvette Harris’s 1997 Mitsubishi was repossessed, she is still paying off her car loan.

 

She has no choice. Her auto lender took her to court and won the right to seize a portion of her income to cover her debt. The lender has so far been able to garnish $4,133 from her paychecks — a drain that at one point forced Ms. Harris, a single mother who lives in the Bronx, to go on public assistance to support her two sons.

 

“How am I still paying for a car I don’t have?” she asked.

 

For millions of Americans like Ms. Harris who have shaky credit and had to turn to subprime auto loans with high interest rates and hefty fees to buy a car, there is no getting out.

 

Many of these auto loans, it turns out, have a habit of haunting people long after their cars have been repossessed.

And while the aggregate subprime auto credit balances are no where near the trillions in debt that was extended to subprime mortgage borrowers leading up to the great recession, for many low-income Americans the fallout could actually be worse because they can"t simply walk away.

With mortgages, people could turn in the keys to their house and walk away. But with auto debt, there is increasingly no exit. Repossession, rather than being the end, is just the beginning.

 

“Low-income earners are shackled to this debt,” said Shanna Tallarico, a consumer lawyer with the New York Legal Assistance Group.

Meanwhile, with low-income borrowers unable to afford a lawyer in many cases, defendants often skip court dates and don"t even realize they"re still on the hook for payments until debt collectors start to garnish their wages.

"Essentially, the dealers are not selling cars. They are selling bad loans,” said Adam Taub, a lawyer in Detroit who has defended consumers in hundreds of these cases.

 

Many lawyers assisting poor borrowers like Ms. Robinson say they learn about the lawsuits only after a judge has issued a decision in favor of the lender.

 

Most borrowers can’t afford lawyers and don’t show up to court to challenge the lawsuits. That means the collectors win many cases, transforming the debts into judgments they can use to garnish wages.

Of course, if used car prices tank leaving millions of people with negative equity balances and defaults from auto loans they could never afford in the first place...you know what that means for new car prices...