New wave of foreclosures by end of 2010 is feared

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About 4 million U.S. homeowners are 90 days or more delinquent on their loans or in foreclosure proceedings, Moody’s Economy.com says. A federal loan modification program is helping a relative few.

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Reporting from Washington — Experts fear that a new wave of foreclosures will hit this year as prolonged unemployment makes it difficult for millions of homeowners to pay their mortgages — and many of them aren’t likely to get much help from a federal program aimed at keeping them in their houses.

• Banks participating in the Home Affordable Modification Program, announced a year ago this week by President Obama, have been slow to turn temporarily reduced mortgage payments into permanent ones.

“The overarching sense is that the mortgage modification process has not worked that well,” said Bert Ely, an independent banking consultant.

Obama administration officials acknowledge that the $75-billion program, which offers banks cash incentives to reduce payments, has had growing pains, and they said they were considering revisions to make it more effective.

Still, the program is expected to show continued progress when data from January are released Wednesday after a strong push by Treasury Department officials to get banks to make more of the modifications permanent.

For example, Bank of America Corp., the nation’s largest servicer of mortgages, said Tuesday that it had increased the number of permanent mortgage modifications to 12,700 last month from 3,200 in December. BofA said an additional 13,700 permanent modifications were in their final stage.

But that’s a drop in the bucket considering that BofA holds about 1 million mortgages that are at least 60 days delinquent. About 4 million homeowners nationwide are 90 days or more delinquent on their mortgages or in foreclosure proceedings, according to Moody’s Economy.com, which analyzes data from credit reporting company Equifax Inc.

Trial modifications and other delays have kept many of those mortgages out of foreclosure, but by the end of this year, 2.4 million borrowers are expected to lose their homes, said Celia Chen, a housing economist at Economy.com.

That would be up from 2.1 million foreclosures and short sales last year and five times the annual numbers earlier in the decade.

It’s unclear when those distressed properties would hit the market, but their large numbers are likely to push home prices back down this year, to a bottom in the fourth quarter, Chen said. And that would make things worse for the 25% of homeowners who already owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.

The biggest blows will be felt in California, Florida, Nevada and other states where home prices have dropped the most and the ranks of struggling homeowners have swelled.

As of December, 11.4% of California homeowners were 90 days or more late on their loans, according to First American CoreLogic, a Santa Ana real estate data firm. That compares with a delinquency rate of 8.4% nationwide.

Despite an increasing number of foreclosure-prevention efforts, lawmakers and community advocates say they haven’t seen enough improvement.

“Outreach isn’t happening,” said Hyepin Im, president of Korean Churches for Community Development, a Los Angeles group that has sought to help hundreds of Asian American borrowers who are struggling to avert foreclosure.

At the outset, banks didn’t screen borrowers before giving them trial modifications, she said. “Then at the end they don’t give very clear answers why they’re not getting permanent modifications. . . . There’s very little transparency.”

A report last week by Moody’s Investors Service called the Obama administration modification program’s effect “underwhelming.” But administration officials said the program was on track to reduce payments for 3 million to 4 million homeowners through 2012.

As of Dec. 31, the program had helped get 787,231 home loans modified for three months and had helped make an additional 66,465 modifications permanent.

Officials noted that not all homeowners are eligible — the program is only for owner-occupied homes, and excludes a variety of mortgages, including jumbo loans. And the administration continues to make changes, including a requirement added last month that homeowners document their income before a trial modification is granted.

But the program continues to draw criticism. Banks have complained they’ve had trouble getting homeowners to provide the necessary documents. Frustrated homeowners have complained of bureaucratic runarounds from their servicers. Federal watchdog agencies have criticized the program. And last month the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced an investigation.

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Surprising increase in souring mortgages

The rate of homeowners falling behind on mortgage payments surged unexpectedly in the fourth quarter, with home loans 60 or more days past due reaching 6.9% of all home loans nationally, 11.0% in California and a whopping 18.5% in Riverside County, according to a study released Tuesday by credit reporting firm TransUnion.

TransUnion samples 27 million consumer files at random each quarter to track credit trends, including the number of mortgages that are at least 60 days late or in foreclosure. The results are seen as a precursor to foreclosures. This was the 12th straight quarter of increasing delinquencies.

The increasing speed at which loans were souring surprised TransUnion, reversing the trend of the previous three quarters, in which delinquency rates, although going up, rose at a slower pace each quarter.

On the national level, the number of troubled mortgages in the survey rose 15.7% from the third quarter of 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2008, with subsequent increases of 14.0%, 11.3% and 7.6% in the first three quarters of 2009.

But the number of loans at least 60 days in arrears rose by 10.2% from the third quarter last year to the final quarter.

The deceleration earlier in 2009 had “created a sense of cautious optimism” at TransUnion, said FJ  Guarrera, vice president of the financial services unit. “We had the feeling things were turning around. … But this uptick has got us turning a watchful eye on what’s occurring. We didn’t anticipate it.”

Six months ago, TransUnion had predicted California’s rate of delinquencies would begin to decline in the middle of this year. The prediction now: not until the first or second quarter next year, Guarrera said.

The most likely explanation for the trend is a combination of factors, he said: payment increases kicking in on adjustable mortgages, particularly pay-option loans; the discouragement of borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth; and loans that have fallen back into delinquency after being been modified by lenders to ease terms for borrowers.

Seasonality may also gave been a factor: Consumers run short on cash at the end of the fourth quarter after buying Christmas gifts but before receiving year-end bonuses and tax refunds.

Riverside’s 18.5% delinquency rate was 6 percentage points higher than the 12.5% recorded in the fourth quarter of 2009. In the other battered Inland Empire county, San Bernardino, the rate increased from 11.2% to 17.2% year over year, TransUnion said. California as a whole went from 6.9% to 11% year over year; Los Angeles County jumped from 6.8% to 11.4%; and Orange County rose from 5.3% to 8.9%.

The national rate of 6.9% compared with 4.6% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 2% in the first quarter of 2007.

“Sometimes it’s hard for consumers to understand the depth of this situation,” Guarrera said. “Historically mortgage delinquency averaged from 1.5% to 2%.”

There will be more data to consider Friday, when the Mortgage Bankers Assn. issues its quarterly report on deliquencies.

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Forget the Mortgage, I’m Paying My Credit Card Bill

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Amid high unemployment and sliding home prices, a growing number of struggling consumers are doing what was once considered unthinkable: paying their credit card bills instead of their mortgages. A recent study developed by TransUnion found the percentage of Americans who were current on their credit cards but behind on their mortgage increased to 6.6 percent in the third quarter of 2009, up from 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, the share of consumers making mortgage payments on time but behind on their credit cards moved in the opposite direction, sliding from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent over the same time period.

The data reflects a “fundamental paradigm shift” in the way consumers prioritize payment of debt obligations, says Ezra Becker, of TransUnion. “This is dramatically different,” he says. “It is a clear manifestation of the dynamics that lead up to the recession and the recession itself.”

Before the housing crisis, bankers typically operated under the assumption that homeowners would do whatever possible to remain current on their mortgage–even if that meant falling behind on other bills. “It used to be that the mortgage was sacrosanct,” says Keith Gumbinger of HSH.com. “You paid it before anything else.” But a combination of factors linked to the current economic mess–falling home prices, high unemployment, and tight consumer credit–have lead many consumers to prioritize credit card payments above mortgage bills. “This sort of thing is what keeps bankers awake at night,” Gumbinger says.

The development is rooted in the housing bust. When home prices turned south–falling roughly 30 percent from their peak in the second quarter of 2006–a great deal of borrowers watched the value of their homes drop below what they owed on their mortgages. Today, roughly one in four homeowners finds himself in this position, which is also known as being “underwater.” Without equity in their homes, such borrowers are more likely to default. “They don’t see any value in putting money into an asset that has lost that much value and will probably never regain that value to offset the mortgages,” says Celia Chen, of Moody’s Economy.com. For information about your mortgage or short selling your home contact www.california-shortsale.com

 

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No Help in Sight, More Homeowners Walk Away

 

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In 2006, Benjamin Koellmann bought a condominium in Miami Beach. By his calculation, it will be about the year 2025 before he can sell his modest home for what he paid. Or maybe 2040. Benjamin Koellmann paid $215,000 for his apartment in Miami Beach in 2006, but now units are selling in foreclosure for $90,000. “There is no financial sense in staying,” he said. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> New research suggests that when a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about reneging on a home loan.   Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} p {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

“People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,” Mr. Koellmann said. “Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?”

After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration’s loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing.

New research suggests that when a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying.

In a situation without precedent in the modern era, millions of Americans are in this bleak position. Whether, or how, to help them is one of the biggest questions the Obama administration confronts as it seeks a housing policy that would contribute to the economic recovery.

“We haven’t yet found a way of dealing with this that would, we think, be practical on a large scale,” the assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, Herbert M. Allison Jr., said in a recent briefing.

The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home’s value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance.

They are stretched, aggrieved and restless. With figures released last week showing that the real estate market was stalling again, their numbers are now projected to climb to a peak of 5.1 million by June — about 10 percent of all Americans with mortgages.

“We’re now at the point of maximum vulnerability,” said Sam Khater, a senior economist with First American CoreLogic, the firm that conducted the recent research. “People’s emotional attachment to their property is melting into the air.”

Suggestions that people would be wise to renege on their home loans are at least a couple of years old, but they are turning into a full-throated barrage. Bloggers were quick to note recently that landlords of an 11,000-unit residential complex in Manhattan showed no hesitation, or shame, in walking away from their deeply underwater investment.

“Since the beginning of December, I’ve advised 60 people to walk away,” said Steve Walsh, a mortgage broker in Scottsdale, Ariz. “Everyone has lost hope. They don’t qualify for modifications, and being on the hamster wheel of paying for a property that is not worth it gets so old.”

Mr. Walsh is taking his own advice, recently defaulting on a rental property he owns. “The sun will come up tomorrow,” he said.

The difference between letting your house go to foreclosure because you are out of money and purposefully defaulting on a mortgage to save money can be murky. But a growing body of research indicates that significant numbers of borrowers are declining to live under what some waggishly call “house arrest.”

Using credit bureau data, consultants at Oliver Wyman calculated how many borrowers went straight from being current on their mortgage to default, rather than making spotty payments. They also weeded out owners having trouble paying other bills. Their estimate was that about 17 percent of owners defaulting in 2008, or 588,000 people, chose that option as a strategic calculation.

Some experts argue that walking away from mortgages is more discussed than done. People hate moving; their children attend the neighborhood school; they do not want to think of themselves as skipping out on a debt. Doubters cite a Federal Reserve study using historical data from Massachusetts that concludes there were relatively few walk-aways during the 1991 bust.

The United States Treasury falls into the skeptical camp.

“The overwhelming bulk of people who have negative equity stay in their homes and keep paying,” said Michael S. Barr, assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions.

It would cost about $745 billion, slightly more than the size of the original 2008 bank bailout, to restore all underwater borrowers to the point where they were breaking even, according to First American.

Using government money to do that would be seen as unfair by many taxpayers, Mr. Barr said. On the other hand, doing nothing about underwater mortgages could encourage more walk-aways, dealing another blow to a fragile economy.

“It’s not an easy area,” he said.

Walking away — also called “jingle mail,” because of the notion that homeowners just mail their keys to the bank, setting off foreclosure proceedings — began in the Southwest during the 1980s oil collapse, though it has never been clear how widespread it was.

In the current bust, lenders first noticed something strange after real estate prices had fallen about 10 percent.

An executive with Wachovia, one of the country’s biggest and most aggressive lenders, said during a conference call in January 2008 that the bank was bewildered by customers who had “the capacity to pay, but have basically just decided not to.” (Wachovia failed nine months later and was bought by Wells Fargo. )  

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Mortgage lenders pursue homeowners even after foreclosure

As terrible as it is to lose your house to foreclosure, at least it’s a relief to put your biggest financial headache behind you, right?

Wrong.

Former homeowners may still be on the hook if there’s a difference between what they owed on their mortgage and what the bank could sell it for at auction. And these “deficiency judgments” are ticking time bombs that can explode years after borrowers lose their homes.

It can even happen to people who got their bank to approve them selling their home for less than it is worth.

Vanessa Corey, for example, short sold her Fredericksburg, Va., home in April 2008. She and her husband built the house in 2004, but setbacks, both personal (divorce) and professional (housing bust), made it impossible for the real estate agent to keep her home. So she negotiated the short sale and thought that was the end of it.

“My understanding was that the deficiency was negotiated away,” she said. “Then, last November, I got a letter from a lawyer telling me I owed my lender $65,000. I had to declare bankruptcy. There was no way I could pay it.”

Many homeowners are now in the same boat. And not just those who took out bigger loans than they could afford or who did so called “liar loans” where they didn’t have to verify their income.

Because of falling home prices, borrowers who always paid their mortgage but who have run into unforeseen circumstances — like unemployment or a job transfer — can no longer sell their homes for what they owe. As a result, they are being forced to short sell or foreclose and are getting caught up in deficiency judgments.

“After the banks foreclose, it’s very common now to have large deficiencies with houses not worth the balances owed,” said Don Lampe, a North Carolina real estate attorney.

Lenders mostly declined comment. Although Corey’s lender, BB&T did indicate it was pursuing more deficiency judgments.

“They follow the rise and fall of foreclosures,” said the spokeswoman, who would not discuss Corey’s account.

Can they come after you?

Whether banks can and will pursue deficiency judgments depends on many factors, including what state the borrower lives in and whether there’s a second mortgage or other liens. But if borrowers ignore the possibility of deficiencies, it could haunt them.

“Once they have a judgment, they can pursue you anywhere,” said Richard Zaretsky, a board-certified real estate attorney in West Palm Beach, Fla. “They can ask for financial records, have your wages garnished and, if you fail to respond, a judge can put you in jail.”

In the case of foreclosure, lenders can pursue deficiencies in more than 30 states, including Florida, New York and Texas, according to the U.S. Foreclosure Network, an organization of mortgage law firms.

Some states, such as California, are “non-recourse” and don’t allow deficiency judgments. But, even there, if the if the original loan was refinanced, some or all of it may be subject to claims.

Deficiency judgments on short sales and deeds-in-lieu can happen in many more places. In these cases, extinguishing the debt is often a matter of negotiating with the bank.

But even when lenders are willing, many borrowers may not be aware that they have to ask for release. So, if you are pursuing a short sale, be sure your attorney asks the bank to release you from any further obligation.

“People shouldn’t have a false sense of security that a deficiency judgment may not be later sought,” Zaretsky said.

He expects many will be filed over the next few years, based on the fact that banks have sold many of these accounts to collection agencies and other third parties, at discount.

“The parties who bought those notes wouldn’t have paid money for them unless they had the intention of acting,” Zaretsky said.

Ticking time bomb

What can be scary is that the judgments don’t have to be obtained immediately. Lenders or collection agencies may wait until debtors have recovered financially before they swoop in. In Florida, the bank can wait up to five years to file. Once the court grants a judgment, the lender has 20 years there to collect, with interest.

It doesn’t have to be a large amount of debt for a lender or collection agency to come after borrowers. Richard Varno and his wife short sold their Nashville home back in 2004 after he lost his job.

It wasn’t until 2008, when the second lien holder asked him for $25,000, that he realized he still was liable.

“I told them, ‘Hey, you guys released the title,'” he said. “As far as I know, I’m off the hook.”

He wasn’t. Releasing title does not necessarily end the debt. It’s complicated because of variations in state law, but, generally, a mortgage has two parts: a pledge of collateral, represented by the home, and a promise to pay off the loan.

Lenders may release property liens in order to facilitate short sales without releasing borrowers from their obligations to pay under the promissory notes. The secured debt can convert to an unsecured one after the sale.

Zaretsky had one client who was so relieved to have arranged a short sale that he signed every paper his real estate agent shoved at him, even a confession that clearly stated he still owed the debt.

“He had no idea what he was doing,” said Zaretsky. “All the lender had to do was go to court to convert the confession into a deficiency judgment.”

Lenders are also very inconsistent. One of Zaretsky’s short-sale clients was ready, willing and able to pay, but the bank did not even ask; another lender always reserves the right to pursue the deficiency.

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