McCain’s Economic Plan: Blame Minorities

Fox News’ Neil Cavuto made news of his own this week by suggesting that the credit crisis was caused by loans made to minorities. 

On Fox’s “Your World” on September 18, Cavuto asked Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), “[W]hen you and many of your colleagues were pushing for more minority lending and more expanded lending to folks who heretofore couldn’t get mortgages, when you were pushing homeownership … Are you totally without culpability here? Are you totally blameless? Are you totally irresponsible of anything that happened?” Cavuto also said, “I’m just saying, I don’t remember a clarion call that said, ‘Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.’” 
 
This wasn’t the first time that Cavuto blamed loans to minorities for the credit crisis.  In an exchange with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) on September 16, Cavuto said “[Y]ou wanted to encourage minority lending — obviously, a lot of Republicans did as well. There was a lot of — expand lending to those to get a home,” Cavuto then rhetorically asked, “Do you think, intrinsically, it was a mistake, on both parties’ part, to push — to push for homeownership for everybody?”  Unlike Becerra, Hoyer either didn’t understand what Cavuto was saying or simply rolled over. “I think clearly what happened,” Hoyer replied, “ is Fannie and Freddie got caught up in trying to do what the Congress wanted done.”

This is not just a generic attack on minorities.

What is going on here is an attempt by Republicans to deflect public outrage from the credit industry, the investment banks and their Republican deregulators and to place the blame for the crisis credit on the government and the Democrats. 

That’s why John McCain and his Republican apologists have focused their ire on the quasi-governmental institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rather than on the wholly private companies and individuals behind the credit meltdown.

Every time McCain or one of the Republican talking-pointers blasts Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the message is: “These are government institutions, run by Democrats. They caused the credit crisis by pushing the Democratic Party agenda, including homeownership for minorities who could not afford to buy homes and should have been content to be renters. Blame them, not us.”

But are they right?  How big a problem are loans to minorities?  And should any future regulation of the credit and mortgage industry eliminate the mortgages that allowed so many minorities to become homeowners?

The answer is No.

The facts show that there has been tremendous racial disparity in lending is growing, and that the subprime mortgage crisis has disproportionately affected minority borrowers. Banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Countrywide issued high-cost subprime loans to minorities more than twice as often as to whites and, at some institutions, the number of high-cost subprime loans issued increased even amid a growing credit liquidity crisis.

Citigroup in 2007 made higher-cost subprime loans 2.33 times more frequently to blacks than to whites. During the same period, JP Morgan Chase made higher-cost subprime loans 2.44 times more frequently to blacks and 1.6 times more frequently to Hispanics than to whites. Bank of America extended to blacks higher-cost loans 1.88 times more frequently, and Country Financial extended to blacks higher-cost loans 1.95 times more frequently than to whites. A study released in 2006 found that blacks and Hispanics were often two or three times more likely to receive high-cost subprime mortgages than were white borrowers.

So, yes, minorities were very much more likely to receive high-cost subprime loans than whites. Yet as Robert J. Shiller of Yale University and Austan D. Goolsbee of the University of Chicago have pointed out, although minorities have been hit hard by the subprime bust, the overall affect of the subprime mortgage boom for minorities was mostly positive.

Both Shiller and Goolsbee think that minorities benefited tremendously by financial innovations created by the mortgage and banking industries, and they have cautioned against reacting to the subprime crisis by restricting innovative mortgage practices that allowed minorities greater access to the American Dream of home ownership than ever before.

In testimony before Congress in September 2007, Robert J. Shiller, professor of economics at Yale, author of the bestseller Irrational Exuberance and co-developer of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, put the issue in context.  As the news of the study findings hits the media, Shiller’s nuanced Congressional testimony is worth recalling:

“The promotion of homeownership in this country among the poor and disadvantaged, as well as our veterans, has been a worthy cause. The Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration, and Rural Housing Services have helped many people buy homes who otherwise could not afford them. Minorities have particularly benefited.”

“Home ownership promotes a sense of belonging and participation in our country. I strongly believe that these past efforts, which have raised homeownership, have contributed to the feeling of harmony and good will that we treasure in America.”

“But most of the gains in homeownership that we have seen in the last decade are not attributable primarily due to these government institutions. On the plus side, they have been due to financial innovations driven by the private sector. These innovations delivered benefits, including lower mortgage interest rates for U.S. homebuyers, and new institutions to distribute the related credit and collateral risks around the globe.”

The same point was made by University of Chicago economics professor and Barack Obama economic advisor Austan D. Goolsbee in his essay in the New York Times entitled “‘Irresponsible Mortgages’ Have Opened Doors to Many of the Excluded.”

Goolsbee cautioned against the “very old vein of suspicion against innovations in the mortgage market.”  He cited a study conducted by Kristopher Gerardi and Paul S. Willen from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton, “Do Households Benefit from Financial Deregulation and Innovation? The Case of the Mortgage Market,” showing that the three decades from 1970 to 2000 witnessed an incredible flowering of new types of home loans.” “These innovations,” Goolsbee observed, “mainly served to give people power to make their own decisions about housing, and they ended up being quite sensible with their newfound access to capital.”

Goolsbee wrote that these economists “followed thousands of people over their lives and examined the evidence for whether mortgage markets have become more efficient over time. Lost in the current discussion about borrowers’ income levels in the subprime market is the fact that someone with a low income now but who stands to earn much more in the future would, in a perfect market, be able to borrow from a bank to buy a house. That is how economists view the efficiency of a capital market: people’s decisions unrestricted by the amount of money they have right now.”

In regard to racism in mortgage lending, Goolsbee noted that “Since 1995, for example, the number of African-American households has risen by about 20 percent, but the number of African-American homeowners has risen almost twice that rate, by about 35 percent. For Hispanics, the number of households is up about 45 percent and the number of homeowning households is up by almost 70 percent.”

He concluded that “When contemplating ways to prevent excessive mortgages for the 13 percent of subprime borrowers whose loans go sour, regulators must be careful that they do not wreck the ability of the other 87 percent to obtain mortgages.”

In the search for villains in the credit crisis, Congress should be careful not to  eliminate the mortgages that have opened doors for many who have historically been excluded from homeownership and the American Dream.

It is also important to recognize that it was the Bush adminstration that pushed for greater access to homeownership for minorities, and specifically tasked Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae with expanding home loans to minorities.

As CNN reported on June 17, 2002:

“President Bush touted his goal Monday of boosting minority home ownership by 5.5 million before the end of the decade through grants to low-income families and credits to developers. ‘Too many American families, too many minorities, do not own a home. There is a home ownership gap in America. The difference between African-American and Hispanic home ownership is too big,” Bush told a crowd at St. Paul AME Church in Atlanta. Citing data he used Saturday in his weekly radio address, Bush said that while nearly three-quarters of white Americans own their homes, less than half of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans are homeowners. He urged Congress to expand the American Dream Down-Payment Fund, which would provide $200 million in grants over five years to low-income families who are first-time home buyers. The money would be used for down payments, one of the major obstacles to home ownership, Bush said. … Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the federal Home Loan Banks — the government-sponsored corporations that handle home mortgages — will increase their commitment to minority markets by more than $440 billion, Bush said. Under one of the initiatives launched by Freddie Mac, consumers with poor credit will be able to obtain mortgages with interest rates that automatically decline after a period of consistent payments, he added.”

In the political battle over blame for the credit crisis, Democrats need to be careful both to counter claims that the crisis was caused by loans to minorities and also not to allow conservatives and Republicans to use the crisis as a pretext to scuttle these programs.

One of Charles Head’s “Operation Homewrecker” Scammers Still Listed as Broker on Reverse Mortgage Website

Keith Brotemarkle, one of the people indicted with Charles Head in an alleged “equity stripping” scheme called Operation Homewrecker, was also involved in a reverse mortgage company called Reverse Mortgage Resources.

The company’s website “invites qualified brokers to become Approved Reverse Mortgage Advisors” with Reverse Mortgage Resources.  It asks potential affiliated brokers ” Who did you speak with at Reverse Mortgage Resources?” 

One of the brokers listed as being at Reverse Mortgage Resources is Keith Brotemarkle.

Brotemarkle was allegedly a participant in Charles Head’s “equity stripping” scheme that netted approximately $5.9 million in stolen equity from 68 homeowners in states across the nation. Targeting distressed homeowners and defrauding mortgage lenders through the use of straw buyers, Head would receive approximately 97 percent of the stolen equity, while the other defendants received either the remaining 3 percent of equity or a salary from the fraudulently-obtained funding. The defendants used referrals from mortgage brokers to identify and solicit new victim homeowners, and also sent “blast faxes” to mortgage brokers throughout the country and mass emails to potential victims. Through misrepresentations and omissions, desperate homeowners would be offered what appeared to be their last best chance to save their homes. Victims were left without their homes, equity, or credit.

The FBI has recently announced that it has begun an investigation to the misuse of reverse mortgages.  Reverse mortgages release the equity in a property to the homeowner in one lump sum or multiple payments. The homeowner’s obligation to repay the loan is deferred until the owner dies, the home is sold, or the owner leaves the home.  In the U.S., reverse mortgages are available for people 62 years old or older. Reverse mortgages are typically used to finance retirement or pay unexpected medical bills.  While reverse mortgages can make sense for seniors, the FBI is concerned about possible abusive sales practices that prey on seniors, such as aggressive and untruthful marketing and excessive fees.

Reverse Mortgage Resources is run by mortgage broker Don Marginson.  Its website states that it is located in Ranch Bernardo, California, and that it is “expanding again with offices to cover the Southeast and Northeast United States.”

We have no reason to believe that Reverse Mortgage Resources is not legitimate, and we would not want to assume that it is illegitimate simply because of its association with Brotemarkle.

But we would suggest that they remove Brotemarkle’s name from its website.

 

 

Update: Mortgage Scam Website Sill Online

Here’s an update to our earlier post “Mortgage Scam Website Still Online.”

The Web page we originally linked to has been taken down. 

We have, however, found another page that is still on online.

The website says “Let technology and the power of the Internet work for you!  Take the headaches out of shopping for a home loan.”

You can find it here.

UPDATE:

We’ve also found a reverse mortgage website that lists Operation Home Wrecker scammer Keith Brotemarkle as one of its brokers.  You can read our post here.

Mortgage Industry Shocked as Massachusetts Court Orders Halt to Foreclosures

The case of Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Fremont Loan and Fremont General Corporation is sending shock waves throughout the mortgage industry.

In what is apparently the first case of its kind, a Massachusetts court has ordered the California-based subprime lender Fremont Investment and Loan to halt all foreclosures in the state to give officials time to review each mortgage to determine whether the loan is “structurally unfair” under the state’s lending laws.

Fremont had been ordered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation last March to cease and desist from making subprime loans.  The FDIC determined that the Fremont had been operating without adequate subprime mortgage loan underwriting criteria, and that it was marketing and extending subprime mortgage loans in a way that substantially increased the likelihood of borrower default or other loss to the bank.

The Massachusetts lawsuit was filed in October 2007 by Attorney General Martha Coakley, alleging that Fremont had engaged in predatory and unfair lending when it made home loans to individuals who could not afford them. Coakley called on the court to order Fremont not to proceed with any foreclosures until her office had time to review the fairness of each mortgage.

In his 29-page decision, Suffolk County Judge Ralph D. Gants agreed with Coakley that a large share of Fremont’s mortgage loans could potentially be considered “structurally unfair” under the state’s lending laws and issued a 90 day preliminary injunction against any foreclosures by Fremont.

Under the terms of the injunction, Fremont must provide the Attorney General’s Office with at least a 30-day notice of all foreclosures it intends to initiate for the approximately 2,200 loans that Fremont still owns and services, and allow the Attorney General an opportunity to object to the foreclosure going forward. If Fremont has issued a loan that is considered “presumptively unfair,” and the borrower occupies the property as his or her principal dwelling, the Attorney General has 45-days to object to the foreclosure.

The judge ruled that a loan is “presumptively unfair” if  (1) The loan is an adjustable rate mortgage with an introductory period of three years or less; (2) The loan has an introductory or “teaser” interest rate that is at least three percent lower than the fully-indexed rate (the relevant index at the time of origination plus the margin specified in the mortgage note); (3) The borrower has a debt-to-income ratio (the ratio between the borrower’s monthly debt payments, including the monthly mortgage payment, and the borrower’s monthly income) that would have exceeded 50% if Fremont had measured the debt, not by the debt due under the teaser rate, but by the debt due under the fully-indexed rate; and (4) Fremont extended 100% financing or the loan has a substantial prepayment penalty or penalty that lasts beyond the introductory period.

The court found that it was unfair under Massachusetts law for Fremont to make loans where Fremont reasonably expected borrowers to default on the loans after the initial introductory interest rates adjusted. In some instances, the court noted, Fremont also offered these same borrowers 100% financing, gravely increasing the risk of default if they were unable to obtain refinancing if the market value of their homes declined. The borrowers’ risk of default was further heightened by Fremont’s substantial prepayment penalties that required borrowers to immediately obtain refinancing after their introductory rates ended.

The judge acknowledged that “the fact that Fremont’s loans bearing these four characteristics were not generally recognized to be unfair at the time these loans originated is not irrelevant to this case” and said that he “will certainly take that factor into account in determining what preliminary injunctive remedy is appropriate to address the unfairness.”

The judge further stated that “this Court emphasizes that borrowers who have received presumptively unfair loans from Fremont should not interpret this preliminary injunction to mean that they have been released from their obligation to repay these loans. They have not been given any such release. The spirit of this decision is simply that Fremont, having helped borrowers get into this mess, now must take reasonable steps to help them get out of it.”

Attorney General Coakley praised the judge’s decision and said that the injunction would allow some borrowers to renegotiate their loans; and if they cannot afford their home, it gives them time to find alternative housing.

“This decision shows again that in many cases, irresponsible and unlawful lending practices caused this foreclosure crisis,” Coakley said. “We intend to hold accountable those who allegedly engage in unlawful lending conduct.”

The mortgage industry obviously does not share Coakley’s view.  The case is now on appeal before the Massachusetts Appeals Court and both the American Financial Services Association and the Mortgage Bankers Association are among those who have filed briefs asking the higher court to overturn the injunction, calling it a “breathtaking usurpation of the legislative role.”

 

Minorities Most Affected by Subprime Crisis — But Minorities Also Benefited From Mortgage Innovations

The evidence of racial disparity in lending is growing, as is the evidence that the subprime mortgage crisis has disproportionately affected minority borrowers.

The most recent evidence is the study released yesterday showing that banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Countrywide issued high-cost subprime loans to minorities more than twice as often as to whites and, at some institutions, the number of high-cost subprime loans issued increased even amid a growing credit liquidity crisis.

The study found that Citigroup in 2007 made higher-cost subprime loans 2.33 times more frequently to blacks than to whites.

During the same period, JP Morgan Chase made higher-cost subprime loans 2.44 times more frequently to blacks and 1.6 times more frequently to Hispanics than to whites.

Bank of America extended to blacks higher-cost loans 1.88 times more frequently, and Country Financial extended to blacks higher-cost loans 1.95 times more frequently than to whites.

Although the recent study is getting far more press coverage than earlier reports, the idea that the subprime mortgage crisis has hit minorities harder than whites isn’t new.  A similar study released in 2006 found that blacks and Hispanics were often two or three times more likely to receive high-cost subprime mortgages than were white borrowers.

Yet as Robert J. Shiller of Yale University and Austan D. Goolsbee of the University of Chicago have pointed out, although minorities have been hit hard by the subprime bust, the overall affect of the subprime mortgage boom for minorities was mostly positive.

Both Shiller and Goolsbee think that minorities benefited tremendously by financial innovations created by the mortgage and banking industries, and they caution against reacting to the subprime crisis by restricting innovative mortgage practices that allowed minorities greater access to the American Dream of home ownership than ever before.

In testimony before Congress in September 2007, Robert J. Shiller, professor of economics at Yale, author of the bestseller Irrational Exuberance, and co-developer of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, put the issue in context.  As the news of the study findings hits the media, Shiller’s nuanced Congressional testimony is worth recalling:

“The promotion of homeownership in this country among the poor and disadvantaged, as well as our veterans, has been a worthy cause. The Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration, and Rural Housing Services have helped many people buy homes who otherwise could not afford them. Minorities have particularly benefited.”

“Home ownership promotes a sense of belonging and participation in our country. I strongly believe that these past efforts, which have raised homeownership, have contributed to the feeling of harmony and good will that we treasure in America.”

“But most of the gains in homeownership that we have seen in the last decade are not attributable primarily due to these government institutions. On the plus side, they have been due to financial innovations driven by the private sector. These innovations delivered benefits, including lower mortgage interest rates for U.S. homebuyers, and new institutions to distribute the related credit and collateral risks around the globe.”

While it is now clear that the subprime mortgage crisis has disproportunately impacted minority borrowers and that this was sometimes the result of racism, we agree with Professor Shiller that the financial innovations created by the mortgage and banking industries in the past decade have delivered benefits to all Americans, “including lower mortgage interest rates for U.S. homebuyers, and new institutions to distribute the related credit and collateral risks around the globe.”

The same point was made by University of Chicago economics professor Austan D. Goolsbee in his essay in the New York Times entitled ‘Irresponsible Mortgages’ Have Opened Doors to Many of the Excluded.

Goolsbee cautioned against the “very old vein of suspicion against innovations in the mortgage market.”  He cited a study conducted by Kristopher Gerardi and Paul S. Willen from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton, Do Households Benefit from Financial Deregulation and Innovation? The Case of the Mortgage Market, showing that the three decades from 1970 to 2000 witnessed an incredible flowering of new types of home loans. “These innovations,” Goolsbee observed, “mainly served to give people power to make their own decisions about housing, and they ended up being quite sensible with their newfound access to capital.”

Goolsbee wrote that these economists “followed thousands of people over their lives and examined the evidence for whether mortgage markets have become more efficient over time. Lost in the current discussion about borrowers’ income levels in the subprime market is the fact that someone with a low income now but who stands to earn much more in the future would, in a perfect market, be able to borrow from a bank to buy a house. That is how economists view the efficiency of a capital market: people’s decisions unrestricted by the amount of money they have right now.”

In regard to racism in mortgage lending, Goolsbee noted that “Since 1995, for example, the number of African-American households has risen by about 20 percent, but the number of African-American homeowners has risen almost twice that rate, by about 35 percent. For Hispanics, the number of households is up about 45 percent and the number of homeowning households is up by almost 70 percent.”

He concluded that, contrary to the current hysteria about the mortgage industry, “the mortgage market has become more perfect, not more irresponsible” and that “When contemplating ways to prevent excessive mortgages for the 13 percent of subprime borrowers whose loans go sour, regulators must be careful that they do not wreck the ability of the other 87 percent to obtain mortgages.”

We share the hope of Shiller and Goolsbee that when the governmental regulators begin to search for villians in the subprime mess and rewrite the rules for mortgages, they will preserve many of the finiancial innovations created by the mortgage and banking industries that have opened doors for so many of the excluded and allowed so many to achieve the American Dream.

Bascom Group Expands Reach for Distressed Real Estate

Another major player has expanded its participation in the distressed real estate market.

Bascom Group, an Irvine, California, real estate (apartment) investment and asset management firm, has announced a new joint venture called Bascom Portfolio Advisors (BPA) that will target distressed multi-family, office, industrial and retail properties in markets throughout the nation,  including broken condo deals.

According to the Bascom Portfolio Advisors’ press release, “In anticipation of looming credit problems stemming from impending loan maturities, potential capital imbalances and decreasing property values, BPA offers workout expertise. Through a range of consulting services, BPA will evaluate distressed assets, identifying financial, operational and market driven issues and present effective solutions to optimize asset values and minimize losses. BPA has resources in place to implement work out solutions, including, asset management/oversight, new capital infusion, and assistance with liquidation.”

Bascom Group has previously engaged in several other join ventures in the distressed property market, including a 2006 joint venture with the private equity firm Warburg Pincus Real Estate I, L.P. to invest up to $200 million in non-performing loans and distressed multi-family properties and both non-performing and sub-performing loans by investing in the underlying senior and mezzanine debt instruments.

We noted in a recent post that major investors, fueled by domestic and foreign investment groups, wealthy individuals, endowments and pension funds, are about to spend billions of dollars buying distressed debt and real estate.

We think that Bascom Group’s announcement is further evidence that there is currently no hotter market than distressed real estate, and that major investors are ready to scoop up distressed properties with significant equity or which they believe to have been mismanaged.

Mortgage Scam Website Still Online

We blogged yesterday about the federal indictment in “Operation Homewrecker” of Charles Head and 18 others for what the FBI alleges to be a major mortgage scam that defrauded homeowners of their houses, their equity and their credit.

Today we saw that a website of Charles Head’s company is still online.

The website of Head Financial Services (“The Smart Way to Shop for a Lender”) is hosted by the website for Huntington Beach News.

The website promises that you can “Get 3 competing mortgage bids with one easy form” and that “Lenders are standing by now to serve you.” 

 

A representative of the Huntington Beach News told us that the page was a paid advertisement.

He also said that he didn’t know who had paid for the page, but that he needed to take the page down.

The only link on the page is to Charles Head’s email at charleschead@aol.com.

UPDATE:

The Web page we originally linked to has been taken down.  You can see another Head Financial Web page that is still online here.

We’ve also found a reverse mortgage website that lists Operation Home Wrecker scammer Keith Brotemarkle as one of its brokers.  You can read our post here.