Few borrowers are asking lenders for adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) these days, what with all the bad publicity paid to ARM resets in the face of soaring foreclosures and borrowing costs for fixed mortgages now sitting at record lows. An annual report on the ARM market published by Freddie Mac Tuesday shows adjustable-rate mortgages accounted for just 3 percent of all conventional home purchase loans in 2009. That's the smallest piece of the pie for ARMs since at least 1982. At that time, they made up 62 percent of all new mortgages.
Bank of America expects to release about 6,000 foreclosed properties into the Nevada housing market in 2010, about 500 a month, according to a local Las Vegas newspaper. The pent-up supply is part of that looming shadow inventory - a stock of distressed properties that have yet to hit the market because of banks' voluntary foreclosure moratoriums prior to the administration's Making Home Affordable program, complex modification evaluations, and lengthy short sale negotiations.
In order to inform Congress about policies to address the nation's mortgage problems, the correlation of poor loan performance and negative equity in the nonprime market was addressed in a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The agency estimates that one-quarter of nonprime borrowers with active loans had negative equity in their homes as of June 30, 2009, with the probability of being underwater highest among borrowers who obtained their mortgages in 2005, 2006, and 2007.
Citigroup, Inc. said Tuesday that it lost $7.8 billion during the fourth quarter of 2009 because of its $20 billion repayment of government bailout dollars. The bank also attributed some of the deficit to soured home loans, but Citi says it still thinks of mortgages as an attractive asset, not toxic waste, and plans to keep them as a central piece of the company's business.
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