Fed Chair Bernanke Warns Foreclosures Could Sink US Economy — Is He Threatening Lenders?

In a speech today at the Columbia Business School, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke issued his strongest warning to date about the danger of the rising tide of home foreclosures sinking the US economy.

“High rates of delinquency and foreclosure,” Bernanke said, “can have substantial spillover effects on the housing market, the financial markets, and the broader economy.”

Bernanke began by detailing some of the nasty numbers of the foreclosure crisis:

• About one quarter of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages are currently 90 days or more delinquent or in foreclosure.
• Foreclosure proceedings were initiated on some 1.5 million U.S. homes during 2007, up 53 percent from 2006.
• The rate of foreclosure starts is likely to be even higher in 2008.
• Delinquency rates have increased in the prime and near-prime segments of the mortgage market.

He then warned that the catastrophic effects of these millions of foreclosure proceedings will extend far beyond the parties to the mortgage:

“It is important to recognize,” Bernanke said, “that the costs of foreclosure may extend well beyond those borne directly by the borrower and the lender.  Clusters of foreclosures can destabilize communities, reduce the property values of nearby homes, and lower municipal tax revenues.  At both the local and national levels, foreclosures add to the stock of homes for sale, increasing downward pressure on home prices in general.” 

“In the current environment, more-rapid declines in house prices may have an adverse impact on the broader economy and, through their effects on the valuation of mortgage-related assets, on the stability of the financial system.”

The real threat that the foreclosure crisis posed to the overall economy, Bernanke said, was “the declines in home values, which reduce homeowners’ equity and may consequently affect their ability or incentive to make the financial sacrifices necessary to stay in their homes.”

The responses to the foreclosure crisis specifically endorsed by Bernanke were nothing new –  working with community groups trying to acquire and restore vacant properties; encouraging lenders and mortgage servicers to work with at-risk borrowers; developing new lending standards to prevent abusive lending practices; working with the Bush administration’s Hope Now Alliance; expanding the use of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and government-sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to address problems in mortgage markets.

But we think that the tone and perspective of his speech signaled that he was far more ready than the current administration to endorse a wide-ranging federal program to aid homeowners who are in default.

Bernanke came close to saying as much:  “Realistic public and private-sector policies must take into account the fact that traditional foreclosure avoidance strategies may not always work well in the current environment.”

We think by ”traditional foreclosure avoidance strategies” Bernanke meant voluntary procedures undertaken by the financial market itself; the “non-traditional foreclosure avoidance strategies” that Bernanke suggested might be necessary would then be mandatory procedures imposed on the market.

We therefore think that Bernanke’s speech contained a threat to the very financial institutions that the Fed has been so generous toward for the past six months.

So far, lenders have been asked to voluntarily help stem the foreclosure crisis by working with homeowners.  Now it appears that Bernanke may be close to supporting mandatory restraints on foreclosures.

We think Bernanke may have been saying this to the lenders and the leaders of the financial market: “We’ve made billions of cheap dollars available to you, so that you could stay afloat and so that you could make this money available for new borrowing and refinancing to prevent foreclosures.  You have not kept your end of the bargain.  If you don’t move much further along this path soon,  it is in the interest of the US economy overall to force you to do so.”

The lenders and financial institutions haven’t listened to threats from Congressional Democrats like Barney Frank or taken the voluntary actions requested by the Bush administration.

Maybe they’ll listen to today’s warning by Ben Bernanke.

We think they’d better.

FBI Expands and Intensifies Criminal Investigation of Mortgage Industry

The New York Times reported today that the federal taskforce established in January to investigate the mortgage industry is intensifying its efforts. 

The initial purpose of the taskforce, comprised of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service, as well as federal prosecutors in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas and Atlanta, was to examine mortgages that were made with little or no documentation of the earnings or assets of the borrowers. 

The investigation is now also focusing on how these loans were bundled into securities.

The taskforce began with an investigation of 14 unnamed mortgage companies; in March, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that the FBI’s probe into potential mortgage fraud had grown to include investigations into 19 separate mortgage companies and involved an estimated 1,300 home mortgage fraud cases.

It is now believed that the investigation has expanded even further.

According to an unnamed official, the expansion of the probe was triggered by the financial industry’s disclosure last week of additional billions of dollars in write-downs from bad mortgage investments.

“This is a look at the mortgage industry across the board,” the official said, “and it has gotten a lot more momentum in recent weeks because of the banks’ earnings shortfalls.”

Mortgage Fraud Scammers Plead Guilty in US Foreclosure Capitol

Stockton, California, has been hit harder by the subprime mortgage crisis than any other US city. 

With a population of just over 280,000, Stockton had 22,000 foreclosure filings in 2007 (1 in 27 households), the highest foreclosure rate of any city in America. 

And as home prices continue to fall, the foreclosure crisis in Stockton is getting worse.

Stockton was an agricultural community, the seat of San Joaquin County, the fifth largest agricultural county in the United States and one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world.  In the past decade, however, Stockton experienced a population boom due to thousands of people settling in the area to escape the higher cost of living in San Francisco and Sacramento. 

Although the median income for a household in Stockton was only $35,453, the per capita income for the city was only $15,405, and 18.9% of families and 23.9% of the population were below the poverty line, subprime loans made houses in Stockton available to thousands who had very little income.

Home construction boomed, house prices soared, and subprime loans kept expanding the bubble further and further. House flippers, speculators and subprime lenders made millions.   

Then, in 2007, the bubble burst.

Few people were more active in profiting from the booming subprime housing market than a young immigrant from Pakistan named Iftikhar Ahmad. 

Between 2003 and 2005, Ahmad made millions of dollars buying and selling more than 100 homes and other properties in the Stockton area.  His company, I & R Investment Properties, LLC, was thriving.  Ahmad deposited at least $8.6 million from escrow closings and was able to send at least $484,000 back home to his native Pakistan.

Ahmad purchased a home at 327 N. Pilgrim Street in Stockton in 1997 for $22,000, then sold and repurchased the same property twice before ultimately selling it a third time in 2005 for $236,000. A house at 2228 E. Stadium Drive in Stockton was bought by Ahmad for $99,000; just 18 months later, he sold the house for $330,000.  In another series of transactions, a house bought and resold several times by Ahmad appreciated in value more than tenfold over an eight-year period.

It sounds like Iftikhar Ahmad was a very smart real estate investor.

The trouble was that Ahmad’s real estate empire was built on fraud.

On October 25, 2007, Ahmad was indicted on federal charges of mail fraud and money laundering, and on April 28, 2008, he pled guilty in federal court to mortgage fraud. 

Ahmad admitted that from July 2003 through October 2005, he participated in a scheme to defraud Long Beach Mortgage, a wholesale lender, in connection with the sale of 10 residential real properties. Between July 2003 and January 2005, Ahmad, through I & R Investment Properties, fraudulently sold 10 residential real properties, obtaining in excess of $1.5 million in loan proceeds.

In each of these transactions, the purchaser financed the property with money borrowed from Long Beach Mortgage.  The scheme involved the use of straw purchasers who lent their name and credit to real estate transactions in which they in fact had no interest. The scheme also involved false statements on loan documents, including those that related to income and occupation, and undisclosed payments by Ahmad of the down payment on behalf of the purchasers.

Many of the mortgages came from subprime lenders and in some cases the buyers used stolen identities. 

And in many of the real estate transactions, the buyers defaulted within a year.

In addition to Ahmad, three other defendants in the scheme have also pled guilty.

John Ngo, 27, of San Ramon, California, a former Senior Loan Coordinator for Long Beach Mortgage, pled guilty to perjury for falsely stating in testimony before the grand jury that he had not received money from a mortgage broker who referred borrowers to Long Beach Mortgage, including borrowers involved in transactions with Ahmad, when in fact he had received more than $100,000 from the mortgage broker.

Manpreet Singh, 24, of Stockton, California, entered a guilty plea to mail fraud for acting as a straw purchaser and borrower in connection with two properties that she purchased from I & R Investments in late 2004 and early 2005. She further admitted that Ahmad paid her in excess of $22,300 for her participation in the scheme.  The properties went into foreclosure within months of the purchase.

Jose Serrano, 44, of Stockton, California, pled guilty to a single count of mail fraud. As part of his plea, Serrano admitted that Ahmad had paid Serrano to recruit straw purchasers, and that Ahmad and Serrano caused several other purchasers to be paid for participating in the scheme.

The case against Iftikhar Ahmad and his co-conspirators was brought by US Attorney McGregor W. Scott, who also indicted mortgage fraud scammer Charles Head. 

Scott said: “This prosecution begins to bring into focus the ways that fraud occurred in the subprime lending market in the Stockton area in the 2003 to 2005 time frame. False representations were made in loan documents; down payments were secretly made by the seller on behalf of borrowers; buyers and recruiters were paid to participate in the scheme; and a loan coordinator working for a wholesale subprime lender was paid by a mortgage broker handling the transactions. The investigation continues.”

Singh’s sentencing date is set for June 9, 2008.  Sentencing for Ahmad, Ngo, and Serrano is set for July 14, 2008.

Sam Zell Sees Little Damage, Quick Recovery, in Commercial Real Estate — with Mortgage Backed Securities Leading the Way

Billionaire real estate investor Sam Zell has never been shy about expressing his views or going against majority opinion. 

He has embraced the description of himself as a “contrarian” — and not only in regard to investment strategies.  

While just about everyone else has been publicly sympathetic to the many thousands of people who’ve been forced into or close to foreclosure, Zell told an audience last week at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles that “What this country needs is a cleansing” in the residential market. “We need to clear out all of those people who should never have been in houses in the first place and who for sure shouldn’t be getting sympathy,” Zell said.

The blame for the current housing slump, according to Zell, isn’t the financial industry’s subprime mortgage practices or overbuilding by contractors.  Rather, the blame belongs to the federal government’s policy of “encouraging homeownership at any cost.” The rise in the U.S. homeownership rate from 63% to 69% during the boom was totally unjustified, Zell said, other than by “the political impetus of, ‘Let’s put more people into homes they can’t afford.’”

Zell, of course, is perhaps the nation’s largest apartment owner. 

As Chairman of Equity Group Investments, Zell controls Equity Residential, the largest publicly traded owner, operator and developer of multifamily housing in the United States with nearly 160,000 apartments in 25 states and the District of Columbia.  And, as we’ve noted in an earlier post, the apartment industry has adamantly opposed federal aid to homeowners facing foreclosure and blamed the housing crisis on what it has called the “misguided” national policy of “home ownership at any cost.”

Zell also went against majority opinion this week when he asserted that the real estate crisis was just about ended, as least for commercial properties, and mortgage-backed securities would be leading the comeback. 

According to Zell, institutional investors are beginning to return to the market for mortgage-backed securities to finance commercial real estate deals and new construction. “I believe the overall market has already started to ease,” Zell said. “Is it in large volumes? No. Is it the first natural step in the evolution? Yes.”

In particular, Zell did not see real damage being done to office properties.  His former company, Equity Office, which he sold to The Blackstone Group in February 2007 for $39 billion, is the largest owner of office buildings in the United States. 

“I’m sure there’s going to be some casualties, particularly in what I would call ex-urban, the glass-block commodity office building,” he said. “I don’t think there is going to be any casualties in Manhattan. I don’t think there’s going to be any casualties in any of the first-class office space around the country. The commercial real estate market is going to do terrific no matter what the economy does, short of a depression.”

On this point, we think he’s probably right.

We wouldn’t want to argue with a real estate investor who has been smart enough to become number 164 on Forbes Magazine’s list of the richest people in the world.

On the other hand, Zell told an audience at the Wharton School last September that the turmoil in the financial markets was only an “emotional reaction” that would soon stabilize.

He was wrong on that one.

And he does own the Cubs.

The Fed Nears the End of the Rate-Cutting Line — Now its the Banks’ Move

After the Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates on Wednesday for the seventh time since September 2007 — lowering the federal funds rate to 2 percent, from 2.25 percent, the lowest level since November 2004 — most analysts observed that the Fed’s move showed that it was more concerned with preventing recession than halting inflation.

We’re not so sure that it is a question of recession verses inflation that’s driving the Fed.

We think that the Fed’s real concern right now is neither inflation nor recession, at least not directly, but the lack of liquidity in the financial markets and the lack of funds that financial institutions are making available to borrowers.

So far, the Fed has pumped more than $400 billion into major U.S. financial institutions in the hope that these institutions would make this money available to borrowers. 

And, so far, they haven’t done so, and liquidity conditions in the credit markets have continued to deteriorate. 

Despite the Fed’s inceasing generosity for the past six months, it has been harder, not easier, for businesses (and individuals) to borrow money.

The Fed is nearing the end of its rate-cutting line.  If the financial spigot does not loosen for borrowers based on the latest cuts, there may be no more that the Fed can do, especially since, with rising fuel and food prices, fears of inflation are already starting to overtake fears of recession, in America’s living rooms as well as its Board rooms.

Two members of the Fed’s Open Market Commitee  — Richard W. Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, and Charles I. Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Fed — which is charged under federal law with overseeing national monetary policy — voted against lowering the rates this time.  And the criticism of the Fed’s policy of lowering interest rates and providing cheap money for the banks is getting broader, louder and more influential.

The banks and major lending institutions have been waiting for the Fed to cut interest rates as far as it possibly would before they start lending.

That moment has probably arrived.

Now it’s the financial market’s turn to make a move.

$23 Million Settlement Reached with UBS in 1031 Exchange Scam Lawsuit

The plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit who allege they lost over $80 million that they had placed with Southwest Exchange, Inc. (SWX) and several other 1031 exchange accommodators or qualified intermediaries (QIs) have reached a settlement with one of the defendants, UBS Financial Services, Inc. (UBS).

You can read our earlier post about the lawsuit here.

Under the terms of the settlement, the plaintiffs will receive $23 million from UBS.

The settlement was approved by the court on March 28, 2008, and a notice was sent to the class action plaintiffs on April 2, 2008.

You can read the settlement notice sent by the law firm of Hollister & Brace here.

UBS is one of several defendants who are alleged to have participated with Donald Kay McGahn and and others in a scheme to steal the money that had been entrusted to them to facilitate tax deferred 1031 exchanges.

In addition to UBS, the plaintiffs claim that other major financial firms, including Citigroup and Salomon Smith Barney, participated in the scheme.

A criminal investigation continues.

More Terrible News for Terrible Herbst — Bonds Ratings Lowered and Still No Deal with Creditors

We wrote a post last month about the likelihood that Herbst Gaming will have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors if it is unable to alter its payment structure for $1.14 billion in debt. 

The company is privately held by brothers Ed, Tim and Troy Herbst, but roughly $371 million of its debt is through publicly traded bonds, which have been negatively affected by the fall-out from the subprime mortgage crisis.

Now there is more terrible news for Terrible Herbst.

On Wednesday, Moody’s Investment Service lowered its bond credit ratings for Herbst Gaming.  The bonds were cut from B3 to Caa2. 

Standard & Poor’s also cut Herbst’s credit rating, from B to CCC. 

In addition, Standard & Poor’s announced that it had placed Herbst Gaming on a “developing watch,” indicating an ongoing reevaluation of the credit quality of Herbst’s debt obligations and the likelihood that its credit rating will be downgraded further.

Bonds rated A (”investment grade”) are judged to be of the highest quality, with minimal credit risk; bonds rated B (”junk bonds”) are considered speculative and are subject to high credit risk; and bonds rated C (also “junk bonds”) are judged to be of poor standing and subject to very high credit risk.

Moody’s said the downgrade took into consideration that Herbst Gaming may not meet its financial obligations in 2008.

“It remains unclear at this time what course of action the lenders may pursue with respect to the event of default,” Moody’s said. “The downgrade acknowledges that the continued volatility in the capital markets along with the high cost of borrowing makes it less likely that a strategic alternative will emerge that does not involve some level of impairment.”

The rating actions came after Herbst Gaming said it had engaged Goldman Sachs for evaluation of strategic and financial alternatives. These alternatives may include a re-capitalisation, refinancing, restructuring or re-organisation of the company’s obligations or a sale of some or all of its businesses.

So far, Herbst Gaming has been unable to negotiate a forbearance agreement with its lenders.

Property of 1031 Exchange Scammer Ed Okun Goes on Sale

High-end retail complex properties in Kansas and Texas owned by the notorious Edward H. Okun have been put up for sale by a federal bankruptcy trustee.

The properties are the 1.1 million square foot West Oaks Mall in Houston, Texas, and the 587,512 square foot Salina Central Mall in Salina, Kansas.

Okun is alleged to be behind the 1031 exchange scam run by The 1031 Tax Group (1031TG) that defrauded thousands of people out of millions of dollars.

Okun was arrested in Miami, Florida, last month and charged with mail fraud, bulk cash smuggling, false statements, and forfeiture from a scheme to defraud and obtain millions of dollars in client funds held by The 1031 Tax Group. 

Those who were defrauded by Okun’s 1031 Tax Group had hoped to recoup some of their missing funds from Okun’s remaining assets — including the West Oaks Mall and the Salina Central Mall — which were purchased from monies allegedly taken from victims in the 1031 exchange scam.

But the Okun-controlled companies that owned the malls declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October. 

It is now unclear whether the proceeds from the sale of the properties would go Okun’s 1031 exchange scam victims.

Both properties apparently have a long line of creditors.

The trustee in the bankruptcy case has hired Keen Consultants, the new real estate division of KPMG Corporate Finance, to market both properties.

You can read our earlier post on Okun and his 1031 exchange scam here.

Doomsday Scenarios for the Housing Market

If the current economic news isn’t scary enough, two respected analysts have come up with Doomsday scenarios that are guaranteed to terrify you.

Here’s one from Mark Gimein, who writes for Slate.com. 

Gimein argues that the subprime crisis is going to spill over into prime loans, greatly expanding both the reach and the consequences of the mortgage debacle and the housing price meltdown.

What’s coming, says Gimein, is a “wave of interest-rate resets in prime loans given to people with good credit that are just as bad, or worse, than we’ve seen in subprime.” 

The effect wil be that many thousands of upscale homeowners will walk away from their homes (and their loans), causing even greater loses for lenders and an even greater fall in housing value.  Another effect: no federal bailout will be able to prevent the total collapse of the housing market.

Here is his reasoning:

“When those dominoes start falling next year [as ARMs reset to higher rates], we may or may not have a subprime bailout plan, and the discussion will start about how to bail out this next tranche of borrowers. The bailout plans on the table now…are reasonably based on the principle of bringing payments down to a point that homeowners can afford.”

“But where prices fall 40 percent to 60 percent, all that goes out the window. Why? Because in expensive locales like San Diego, tens of thousands of people with 100 percent loan-to-value mortgages and option ARMs are living in homes in which they have no equity and on which they owe a lot more than the house is worth.”

“In these places, accepting a government “bailout” that pays them, say, 90 percent of the value of the house to keep from foreclosing will be very tough for lenders, who (if the appraisers don’t fudge the numbers) could be forced to take 36 cents or 45 cents on the dollar for their loans. On the other hand, any plan that makes them pay more if they can afford it is hugely disadvantageous for the borrowers, who have option ARMs about to reset and are much better off handing the keys to bank—and maybe even scooping up the foreclosed house down the street.”

“If you’re…in this position, you might start thinking very seriously about just how attached you are to the wisteria vine snaking over the basketball hoop on your garage. That’s what a lot of other California borrowers will be doing.

“Bet on this: Whatever moral qualms are being urged on borrowers to keep them from walking away from their mortgages, they’ll count for a lot less than the economic reality facing borrowers whose homes have fallen in value by half. Lenders had no reservations about selling borrowers loans with rising payments that would be poisonous in a rising market. Now it seems borrowers have no reservations about leaving those lenders with the risks they begged to take.”

“Consider, too, that, yes, going through a foreclosure kills your credit rating and makes it a lot harder to buy a new house—but as more and more prime borrowers go into foreclosure, it’s perfectly possible that buying a new home a year later will in the near future be as routine and unsurprising as the once inconceivable idea that you can get a whole batch of new credit cards two years after a bankruptcy.”

If that scenario isn’t chilling enough, Yale University economist Robert J. Shiller (author of Irrational Exuberance and co-developer of the Case-Shiller home-price index) has warned that the current housing crisis could exceed that of The Great Depression.

Specifically, Shiller announced that there’s a good chance housing prices will fall further than the 30% drop in the historic depression of the 1930s.

“I think there is a scenario that they could be down substantially more [than in the Depression],” Shiller said in a speech spech given last week at the New Haven Lawn Club and reported in the Wall St. Journal.

Here is Shiller’s reasoning:

Even normal real estate cycles typically take many years to correct.  Because home prices rose about 85% from 1997 to 2006 adjusted for inflation in the biggest national housing boom in U.S. history, the current downturn is likely to go much deeper and last far longer than any other has in the past.

“Basically we’re in uncharted territory,” Shiller said. ” It seems we have developed a speculative culture about housing that never existed on a national basis before.”

As for us, we’re not quite ready to evaluate either Gimein or Shiller as credible prophets of doom. 

We note that, while widely respected, Professor Shiller has also been called the “Dr. Doom” of the U.S. economy.

And we think that both the Pollyannas and the scaremongers have usually been proven wrong.  Economic life usually operates between the poles of perfect success and catastrophe.

But not always. 

If you’ve got something to say to help us all sleep at night, please let us know.

Until then, pleasant dreams…

We Got Banned

Today we were banned from the Bankruptcy Forum for “Posting unwanted spam.”

The Bankruptcy Forum has a message board containing news and information about bankruptcy.

We joined the forum a few days ago so that we could see what people were interested in and writing about in regard to bankruptcy and also to tell people about our posts about bankruptcy here at The Fox Real Estate Report.

The post we wrote on the forum included a link to all of the bankruptcy related articles that we’ve published here, and stated that the articles were related to bankruptcy and the mortgage/subprime crisis.  We asked for comments and suggestions about topics, issues, and news we should cover.

Quite a lot of people followed the link and read our posts.

They thought that finding our posts on bankruptcy on the forum was worthwhile.

Now forum members won’t be able to find them there.

That’s bad for them.