The (Slow) Housing Recovery: Tighter mortgage financing is to blame

I’ll never forget the time I was visiting a new home sales office near Los Angeles in the height of the boom years.  The agent was attempting to explain to the potential buyer how an Option ARM could help them qualify for a higher loan balance that could easily be refinanced into a standard 30-year fixed rate program down the road.  As the alarm bells started going off in my head, I decided to re-visit the first model rather than risk challenging the agent’s presumptuous thinking.  It was at that point that I was pretty sure our industry was firmly in bubble territory.

Fast forward to 2014, and we now have the opposite problem of not enough credit due to often overly stringent underwriters who prefer to approve only the best candidates with near-perfect credit scores and reliable W-2 income.  In fact, the problem has become acute enough that the Mortgage Bankers Association recently revised their 2014 forecast downwards due to “a combination of rising rates and regulatory implementation, specifically the new Qualified Mortgage Rule.”  The new forecast predicts annual refinancings this year to be down 60 percent from 2013 (largely due to higher interest rates) but purchase originations to still rise by 3.8 percent.  During the fourth quarter of 2013, the mortgage businesses for Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase were reportedly down by 60 and 55 percent from a year ago, respectively.

As noted in my column last month, the reasons for the tighter credit are two-fold:  an incomplete Dodd-Frank Act which means regulations are unclear, and new Qualified Mortgage Rules which went into effect on January 10^th.  Qualified mortgages are those which are no longer than 30 years, charge fees and points no more than three percent of the loan amount and don’t include any negative amortization or interest-only programs.  For adjustable rate loans, underwriters now must take into consideration the potential maximum rate and payment amount over the life of the loan instead of approving based on the teaser rate alone.  This would seem to disproportionately impact younger buyers who were previously willing to take a gamble that their paychecks would improve along with their careers, thus making higher monthly payments in the future feasible.

Also now largely shut out of the mortgage market are the newly self-employed, as evidenced by nationally syndicated housing columnist Lew Sichelman’s disappointing experience to refinance a rental property despite a credit score of 760 and an LTV of 70 percent.  With less than two years of history of 1099 income, Lew’s equity in several other properties simply wasn’t relevant under today’s underwriting criteria.

There may, however, be a signs of a thaw in this somewhat frozen market.  Many eyes are now on former congressman Melvin L. Watt as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  As opposed to Edward DeMarco, the agency’s acting director for the past four years, Mr. Watt has already indicated a clear shift in direction which includes delaying a series of higher loan fees announced in December and putting access to mortgage credit front and center ahead of other goals, especially that of scaling back the federal government’s role in propping up the residential mortgage market.

What this means in the short run is that those buyers without perfect credit and large down payments will not face higher upfront loan fees charged by Fannie and Freddie.  In the long run, there remains a larger policy disagreement on the role of private capital in our nation’s mortgage market, one that would be completely separate without any connection to government.  And yet in a lending environment of mortgage rates below five percent, private capital has stayed on the sidelines because there are too many other competing options which offer higher yields.  Add in the considerable interest rate risk that an investor takes with a traditional 30-year fixed-rate loan and it’s not surprising that lenders continue to be picky.  Eventually, however, lenders which rode the now-declining refinancing wave of 2013 will have to make up that lost business with new loan originations.

To spur lending, three things should happen.  Firstly, Fannie and Freddie will have to expand the range of mortgages they guarantee without lowering standards.  Secondly, the re-emergence of private capital should occur before government fees are raised.  And thirdly, Mr. Watt should ensure that the 30-year fixed-rate loan remains a bedrock of housing finance given its historic role as the best way for homeowners to slowly build wealth without worrying about future interest rate shocks.  

Is the Housing Market Rebound Sustainable?

By almost any measure – and as noted regularly in BuilderBytes’ MetroIntelligence Economic Update -- the housing market is not only on the mend, but rebounding much faster than most economists and housing analysts predicted.    Not only did the median price for existing homes rise by nearly 10% nationally over the past year, but they continued rising during the seasonally slow winter months, and already show signs of gaining altitude as the spring buying season continues.

Meanwhile, a combination of reduced new home construction, fewer foreclosures, investors paying cash for homes to rent out and owners still sitting on under-water homes means inventory levels that have fallen to 12-year lows.  So is the current scenario just an economic blip, or have we finally launched onto a sustained rebound that will last?

This answer is that this rebound may have some legs.  For one, home prices nationally are still below their long-run average compared to incomes, and affordability has rarely been higher.  Home builders, who have long struggled to gain traction with skittish buyers and had to compete against discounted foreclosures, are now facing shortages of labor, credit and finished lots to fulfill the rising demand for new housing, pushing NAHB’s Housing Market Index (HMI) in April down by two points to 42 (anything above 50 indicates more builders view conditions as good).  Consequently, whereas housing starts in March rose by nearly 47% over the past year, building permits rose by a much smaller 17% as builders must now address the rough edges of the rebound.

One reason that demand now exceeds supply is that while household formations were in hibernation as people doubled up with roommates, families or simply postponed divorce, population growth continued unabated.  Today, there are potentially millions of renters and households living in shared quarters who are ready to become home buyers given that they pass muster with today’s tougher credit standards.

Another reason for the supply imbalance is that investors -- large and small, foreign and domestic -- have increasingly funneled cash into what is now viewed as a safe investment:  U.S. real estate.  Currently, nearly one-third of all home sales are due to cash buyers, and it was this fairly consistent level of activity over the past two years which put that long-awaited floor under prices (which had foundered as federal and state tax credit gimmicks wore off.)

That fear of catching the falling knife, which froze the housing market for several years, has been replaced by the boom-era fear of missing out on the upside.  For these investors – which include brand-name private equity firms such as Blackstone Group and Colony Capital as well as smaller outfits issuing their own private placements for debt – they’ve managed to ignite a rental property boom, which has in turn put pressure on owners of traditional apartments.  What remains to be seen is what happens to these rentals when prices are no longer rising and rents have stalled, yet fund investors are still demanding the returns they were promised.  In contrast, traditional ‘mom and pop’ landlords can simply pay off the mortgage and then rely on the additional cash flow when they retire.

If there is one unknown which may derail the strength of this recovery, it is interest rates:  what happens when rates return to 5% or 6%, or even the 8.38% average noted over the last 49 years?  It’s hard to over-estimate the power that historically low interest rates have on affordability levels:  the same buyer whose $1,000 monthly payment would allow them to purchase a $165,000 mortgage at 6.1% (the rate in late 2008) could purchase a $222,000 mortgage at 3.5%, thereby boosting their purchasing power by a third.  This provides today’s buyers with a classic dilemma:  pay more today than they did a year ago, or pay even more in the future when interest rates may be higher.

In addition, home equity lines of credit are almost certain to rise as soon as the Federal Reserve ends its current policy of near-zero interest rates.  If the minutes from the most recent Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings are to be believed, then “QEIII” (the third round of quantitative easing) could end before the end of this year, and that could send variable rates higher – albeit slowly.  But for that to happen, the economy will have likely proven that it’s definitely on the mend, and that’s the sort of problem the federal government –and the yawning deficit – would almost certainly like to face.