Quote of the week… “I’ve been blamed for just about everything that’s wrong with this country.”–Elvis Presley

We who work in the real estate and mortgage industries know exactly how Elvis felt. The same people who unfairly blamed us totally for the recession now look to us alone for signs the economic recovery has taken hold. They might want to remember the health of the housing market is directly dependent on the health of the jobs market, which is not under our control. In any case, everyone felt better last week when January Housing Starts were UP a surprising 14.6%. Even though starts are down 2.6% from a year ago, this still shows builders are more hopeful going forward. The boost came from multi-family units, though single-family starts were off a mere 1% for the month.

A lot of home buying activity is due to the affordability now out there. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a major bank reported their index shows home affordability in Q4 of 2010 at its highest level in 20 years. Their measure found that 73.9% of the new and existing homes sold in Q4 were affordable to families making the national median income of $64,400.

Business tip of the week… A big part of success is not giving up. Studies show that one trait shared by all very successful people is perseverance. They are persistent, determined, tenacious, pursuing a goal far beyond the point where the average person gets discouraged.

Banks and investment banks played with the US economy and profited mightily at the expense of America on the whole.  Regardless if you were conservative and never played in the housing boom, you were used by the banking industry and are now worse off for it. 

On Saturday the Reno Gazette-Journal ran a front page story “Rescue may miss many who need it”. First, let me say in essence that the paper is correct.  Bank of America is recognizing that 45,000 very sick homeowners are going to lose their homes.  The real issue is that those 45,000 are the nearly dead and it is the 16 million homes underwater that need to be focused on and until all banks step up to the plate, housing is flying south for a very long and bitter winter. 

I want to acknowledge just how difficult acting on the problem really is.  The banks have woven a web of curious networks between insurers, investors, servicers and others with protections, profits and liabilities that can be hard to understand.  Despite the problems we are facing, some are profiting from the chaos, not least the very assorted banks and investment banks that brought on the disaster to the American people.

On one hand the commonly held belief, still held by many, is to let the cleansing process work itself out.  Many homeowners that never bought during the boom, or have free and clear homes, are heard to shout this sentiment out and cast all that are in trouble as dilatants that have received their just rewards for not being smart like them.   Without a question in 2006-2007 tens of thousands of people lost their homes that should never have ever received a loan.  But now we are talking about 2010.   We are talking about people that bought homes in 2007, after the “bubble burst”, fully qualified for a home, put 20% cash down and today are underwater!  We are also talking about homeowners that purchased homes in 2001, well before the much talked about “bubble” and put 20% cash down and today have homes that are underwater.  Our market has rolled back well beyond the stupidity of 2003-2006, back to 1998-1999 values.

In the Saturday RGJ article titled “Rescue may miss many who need it”, University of Nevada, Reno economist Tom Cargill said of the new Obama plan “it’s a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money. It uses taxpayers’ money to support bad decisions made by people to buy homes they can’t afford.” Personally, I highly disagree.

We are looking at homeowners that now realize that they are $200,0000-$500,000 upside down in their homes. These were all qualified buyers, who all put down 20% or more and are underwater.  Mr. Cargill, please tell these tens of thousands of Nevada homeowners tough luck and that they made bad decisions.  Please tell them to forget that they owe more money than most and to go out and become consumers again and run up their credit cards and spend money so the economy can grow and the banks can profit and they just need to suck it up and in 7-12 years, if they are lucky, their homes just might, maybe have some equity in them.

What needs to be done?  I suggest the radical notion of the following:  protect the principal, protect the investors, encourage homeowners to pay off their principal loan balances.  First, work with all homeowners that have homes underwater and who are current on their payments.  Move all loans to a .5% interest based on a 15 year amortized loan.  Years 1-5 are at .5%, years 6-8 are at 4%, years 9+ are at 6%.

Example:  A $300,000 loan @ 5.5%/30 years has a P.I. payment of $1,703 per month.  .5% has a payment of $1,730 per month.  The point here is that many homeowners are short selling as much as they realize that it will easily be 10 years before they have equity but can make the payment.  With a 15 year loan not only do we have free and clear homes in 15 years in a mere 5-7 years, the loans will have been paid down so much that with no appreciation whatsoever in the housing market the homeowner will have equity. 

For those homeowners that are not current they can be offered 20, 25, 30 year loans.  In the same example the loan payment would drop over $800 per month on a 30 year loan.  If that does not save the homeowner then per Mr. Cargill they truly overbought or their income has been cut so much that foreclosure is their only option. 

 Drastic?  Not really.  Homeowners take homes off the market, principal is preserved, fewer homes for sale, better chance for stabilization.  Better stabilization and growth, better tax income for the city, better confidence in an individual’s personal financial position, the more likely they are to spend money. The more money they spend the more taxable income to the state, the more confidence homeowners have about themselves, the more likely to buy services, the more services they buy, the more companies can expand and hire. The more people that have jobs the better the economy and so on.

What about the federal government and the bailout money?  Well obviously .5% for 5 years is a bit painful for the banks so that money goes to give the banks/investors a 2% additional return for years 1-5.  When a seller sells in years 1-5 they pay to the federal government a percentage of the profits, if any, as a form of repayment.

Investors get their principal, banks stop write- downs, banks stop paying tens of thousands of employees to handle bad debt, banks save hundreds of millions of dollars on foreclosure costs and write-offs, homes come off the market and prices stabilize.

It need not be that way.  What we have is government run amok.   First, two decades of excessively easy monetary policy which has led to a devastating debt bubble.  Then, when the crisis hits, the government responds by using taxpayer dollars to save the “Too Big To Fail” (TBTF) institutions that played a key role in fostering the debt bubble.  Finally, seeing that the public is up in arms about such policies and government behavior, the government reacts by refusing to aid those institutions that are now victims of the government’s own and the TBTF institutions’ policies, but are vital to economic recovery.

In trying to make it look like it is protecting the taxpayer, the FDIC has taken heavy handed and aggressive tactics with community financial institutions.  The problem here is political.  They want to appear tough to satisfy what they perceive the public wants, especially after the government’s TARP, AIG, and TBTF “bonus” fiascos.  The result is a depleted FDIC insurance fund, a certain need for a taxpayer bailout sometime this year, and devastation for America’s small banks and small business.

Each of the 702 endangered institutions has a Cease and Desist Order (C&D), the last step before closure.  Each C&D Order and all of the correspondence from the FDIC accuses Boards and Management of “incompetence” and “mismanagement” despite the fact that in ’05 and ’06, most of these same Boards and Managements received high scores in examinations.  I simply can’t swallow the assertion that most of the 702 institutions suffer from “incompetent” management.  We are in the midst of an economic crisis, not a crisis of management.  Yet, the FDIC is addressing the issue as if only the latter is the cause.

Each of the 702 problem institutions has a capital raising mandate as part of the C&D order.  The fact is, once on this list, capital is impossible to raise.  Those with capital to inject simply only have to wait for the FDIC to close the institution to get a once in a lifetime sweetheart deal from the FDIC.  On the other hand, the TBTF easily raised capital last November and December to repay TARP in order to ensure that big bonuses could be paid.  They could raise capital because the public knows that the government won’t let these behemoths fail.

Worse, when an institution is closed, in come the Wall Street wealthy who appear to get the deal of a lifetime, at taxpayer expense.  [The FDIC will argue that the insurance funds are not taxpayer dollars, but insurance premiums paid by insured institutions.  Two points: 1) the FDIC fund is now -$20 billion, so soon taxpayers will be on the hook; 2) bank fees would be lower without insurance premiums, so, like every other tax, eventually the consumer pays.]  By the way, one must be an “approved” purchaser to purchase the failed banks, an exclusive club composed mainly of Wall Street sharks.

Capital devastation for these small banks comes mainly from souring loans (although the opening salvo was the losses many took on FNMA and FHLMC preferred stock in September, 2008, another government failure).  In many instances accounting rules require loan write-downs upon renewal of loans if appraisals come in lower than at loan inception, virtually a 100% probability.  Bank balance sheets are illiquid by design (they turn illiquid collateral assets into cash via the loan process).  Rules that force “mark to market” on such illiquid assets only erodes capital, make survival problematic, and prohibit new loans to small business, thereby prolonging the economic crisis and joblessness.  Instead of blaming management and employing Gestapo like tactics, an approach to capital that allows “healing” time for bank balance sheets appears to be a better and cheaper approach, especially in light of the FDIC’s mandate to resolve institutions using a “least cost” approach.  Most of the assets on those balance sheets will regain value as economic conditions improve.  Time is all the institutions need.

One way to provide time would be to have a special category of capital where the “write-downs” of loans due to economic circumstances could be amortized over a long period, say 10 or 20 years.  This would give the vast majority of the 702 doomed institutions new life.  If it is publicly perceived that they will survive, most will have the ability to raise capital, and the time to heal.

I believe the devastation and havoc being wreaked upon Main Street America’s financial institutions by Ms. Bair and the FDIC’s current policies will continue to cripple America’s economic engine and prolong the economic malaise.  Funny thing about America, oftentimes media heroes turn out to be real villains: Elliot Spitzer, Bernard Madoff, Alan Greenspan, Tiger Woods, to name a few.  If the FDIC’s current policies continue, we’ll soon add Shelia Bair to this list.

Robert Barone, Ph.D.

March 1, 2010

Courtesy of Ancorawest and Robert Barone