by Calculated Risk on 12/11/2006 10:55:00 AM

From David Streitfeld, Times Staff Writer: A loan that'll get ugly fast

EVERY day, Will Hertzberg owns a little less of his three-bedroom house in Corona.

Like hundreds of thousands of other homeowners around the state, Hertzberg has a mortgage that lets him choose how much he pays each month.

Like many of them, he always chooses to pay as little as possible.

For the moment, this allows the 56-year-old Hertzberg to continue living in his tract home despite being only marginally employed. But his debt is swelling, and his mortgage company controls his fate.

"I am rather screwed," he said.

And here are his payment options:

One of his options is to pay $2,513 a month. That would cover the principal and interest as if it were a traditional 30-year loan.

A second possibility is to pay $2,279, which would cover only the interest.

But each month he always takes the cheapest option: paying $1,106 and promising to make up the shortfall later.

Hertzberg is not alone. The use of option ARMs have really taken off, especially in California:

In 2003, only about 8 of every 1,000 people buying a home or refinancing a mortgage in California got a pay option loan ...

Last year, 1 in 5 loan applicants got one.

In the first eight months of 2006... Nearly 1 in 3 California loan applicants are now choosing them.

But the impact is a still a "big unknown":

Just how many of these homeowners will end up in trouble is the big unknown for the housing market and the economy. Although many economists expect the loans to prompt a certain degree of turmoil, they don't think it would cause a recession.

UPDATE: And from Reuters: U.S. home lenders brace for bad news, legislation

During the recent U.S. housing boom, mortgage lenders touted so-called exotic mortgages that allowed people to buy houses they could not otherwise afford. Now those lenders are bracing for the not-so-happy story of borrowers...
...
A mortgage survey due on Wednesday is expected to show that more and more Americans are in danger of losing their homes. The quarterly report from the Mortgage Bankers Association is also expected to show that the same mortgage products that helped send the housing market into the stratosphere are now weighing homeowners down.

In a hint at Wednesday's data, October saw more foreclosure actions than any other month this year ...