Another Tsunami of ARM Resets is Still to Come

Below is a good summary of the condition of the mortgage market and how we are going to be hit by another tidal wave of problems. It appears that if you add together all the resets it looks like we still have about $500B (that is one-half trillion) in resets in 2008. Ultimately, this is quite a mess. This is going to be something to watch, as a spectator. Text in bold is my emphasis. From the WSJ:

Next year, interest rates are set to rise -- or "reset" -- on $362 billion worth of adjustable-rate subprime mortgages, according to data calculated by B of A.

While many accounts portray resetting rates as the big factor behind the surge in home-loan defaults and foreclosures this year, that isn't quite the case. Many of the subprime mortgages that have driven up the default rate went bad in their first year or so, well before their interest rate had a chance to go higher. Some of these mortgages went to speculators who planned to flip their houses, others to borrowers who had stretched too far to make their payments, and still others had some element of fraud.

Now the real crest of the reset wave is coming, and that promises more pain for borrowers, lenders and Wall Street. Already, many subprime lenders, who focused on people with poor credit, have gone bust. Big banks and investors who made subprime loans or bought securities backed by them are reporting billions of dollars in losses.

The reset peak will likely add to political pressure to help borrowers who can't afford to pay the higher interest rates. The housing slowdown is emerging as an issue in both the presidential and congressional races for 2008, and the Bush administration is pushing lenders to loosen terms and keep people from losing their homes.

Bank of America Securities, a unit of the big Charlotte, N.C., bank, estimates that $85 billion in subprime mortgages are resetting during the current quarter, and the same amount will reset in the first quarter of 2008. That will rise to a peak of $101 billion in the second quarter. The estimates include loans packaged into securities and held in bank portfolios.

Larry Litton Jr., chief executive of Litton Loan Servicing, says resetting of adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, has recently emerged as a bigger driver of defaults. "The initial wave was largely driven by a higher frequency of fraudulent loans...and loose underwriting," says Mr. Litton, whose company services 340,000 loans nationwide. "A much larger percentage of the defaults we're seeing right now are the result of ARM resets."

More than half of the subprime delinquencies and foreclosures this year involved loans that hadn't yet reset, and thus were due to factors such as weak underwriting and falling home prices, according to Rod Dubitsky, an analyst with Credit Suisse.

The majority of subprime ARMs due to reset next year are so-called 2-28 loans, which carry a fixed rate for two years, then adjust annually thereafter. In a speech earlier this month, Federal Reserve Governor Randall Kroszner explained how a typical 2-28 subprime loan issued in early 2007 might work. He said the interest rate on the loan would start at 7%, then jump to 9.5% after two years. For a typical borrower, that would add $350 to the monthly payment.

Besides the $362 billion of subprime ARMs that are scheduled to reset during 2008, $152 billion of other loans with adjustable rates are set to reset, according to Banc of America Securities. The other resetting loans include "jumbo" mortgages of more than $417,000 and Alt-A loans, a category between prime and subprime. The latter category is the riskier, in part because it includes borrowers who provided little or no documentation of their income or assets.

The number of borrowers facing higher payments isn't growing merely because the amount of loans with resets is higher. Another factor is that those with a looming reset now have a tougher time sidestepping it by refinancing or selling their home. "There is a large amount of borrowers who are in products that either no longer exist or that they no longer qualify for," says Banc of America Securities analyst Robert Lacoursiere.

Falling home prices mean that many borrowers have little or no equity in their home, making it tougher for them to get out from under their loans.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Sheila Bair, have been pressing lenders to modify terms in a sweeping way, rather than going through a time-consuming case-by-case evaluation that could end up pushing many people into foreclosure. Officials at the Federal Reserve and in the Bush administration have estimated that 150,000 mortgages are resetting a month.

Ms. Bair has proposed that mortgage companies freeze the interest rates on some two million mortgages at the rate before the reset to help borrowers avoid trouble. "Keep it at the starter rate," Ms. Bair said at conference last month. "Convert it into a fixed rate. Make it permanent. And get on with it."

Picking up on that theme, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the past week announced an agreement with four major loan servicers, including Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's biggest mortgage lender, to freeze the interest rates on certain ARMs that are resetting. The freeze would be temporary, rather than for the life of the loan. The program is aimed at borrowers who are living in their homes and making their mortgage payments on time, but aren't expected to be able to make the higher payments after reset.

The mortgage industry opposes a blanket move to modify loans that are resetting, says Doug Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association. While modification may make sense in some cases, he says, it may also simply postpone the inevitable or reward borrowers who didn't manage their finances wisely. Mr. Duncan says the industry is working with government officials and consumer groups to develop principles that could be used to determine quickly who qualifies for a modified loan.

The political efforts are aimed at keeping the U.S. economy out of a housing-triggered recession. The Mortgage Bankers Association estimates that 1.35 million homes will enter the foreclosure process this year and another 1.44 million in 2008, up from 705,000 in 2005.

The projected supply of foreclosed homes is equal to about 45% of existing home sales and could add four months to the supply of existing homes, says Dale Westhoff, a senior managing director at Bear Stearns. This is a "fundamental shift" in the housing supply, says Mr. Westhoff, who believes that home prices will drop further as lenders "mark to market" repossessed homes.

Foreclosed homes typically sell at a discount of 20% to 25% compared to the sale of an owner-occupied home, analysts say. Lenders are eager to unload the properties, and the homes tend to be in poorer condition. (I don’t think the buyer is negotiating hard enough.)

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress earlier this month, "A sharp increase in foreclosed properties for sale could...weaken the already struggling housing market and thus, potentially, the broader economy."

The big concern is a vicious cycle in which foreclosures push down home prices, making it more difficult for borrowers to refinance and causing more defaults and foreclosures.