by Calculated Risk on 8/21/2012 09:07:00 PM

Europe is coming back from vacation, from the WSJ: Europe Pressures Intensify

After a summer lull, Greece is again Ms. Merkel's biggest headache.

The Greek government, struggling with depression-like conditions that have pushed the economy to the brink, is likely to need many billions of euros of additional aid to avoid bankruptcy.

... The chancellor is set to meet with French President François Hollande on Thursday and Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Friday, meetings the chancellor's aides say will help determine Berlin's course.

... The chancellor isn't likely to reach a decision for several weeks, German officials said. In part, they said, she is waiting for two developments that could expand or constrain her options: Germany's constitutional court is due to rule on Sept. 12 on whether the euro zone can launch its permanent bailout fund, and inspectors from the European Union and the IMF are due to report on the size of Greece's finance shortfall. The latter could take until October, some euro-zone officials say.

Merkel and Samaras will meet on Friday with a press conference following ... The following week ECB President Mario Draghi will speak at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on Saturday, Sept 1st at 10 AM.

On Wednesday:
• At 7:00 AM ET, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the mortgage purchase applications index.

• At 10:00 AM, Existing Home Sales for July is scheduled for release by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The consensus is for sales of 4.50 million on seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) basis. Sales in June 2012 were 4.37 million SAAR.

• At 2:00 PM, the FOMC Minutes for the meeting of July 31-August 1, 2012 will be released. Once again the minutes will be closely scrutinized for hints about QE3.

Another question for the monthly economic prediction contest:

• During the day: The AIA's Architecture Billings Index for July (a leading indicator for commercial real estate) will be released.

by Calculated Risk on 8/21/2012 05:10:00 PM

From the FHFA: New Standard Short Sale Guidelines for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are issuing new, clear guidelines to their mortgage servicers that will align and consolidate existing short sales programs into one standard short sale program. The streamlined program rules will enable lenders and servicers to quickly and easily qualify eligible borrowers for a short sale.

The new guidelines, which go into effect Nov. 1, 2012, will permit a homeowner with a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgage to sell their home in a short sale even if they are current on their mortgage if they have an eligible hardship. Servicers will be able to expedite processing a short sale for borrowers with hardships such as death of a borrower or co-borrower, divorce, disability, or relocation for a job without any additional approval from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

“These new guidelines demonstrate FHFA’s and Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s commitment to enhancing and streamlining processes to avoid foreclosure and stabilize communities,” said FHFA Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco. “The new standard short sale program will also provide relief to those underwater borrowers who need to relocate more than 50 miles for a job.”

A few details:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will waive the right to pursue deficiency judgments in exchange for a financial contribution when a borrower has sufficient income or assets to make cash contributions or sign promissory notes: Servicers will evaluate borrowers for additional capacity to cover the shortfall between the outstanding loan balance and the property sales price as part of approving the short sale.

Offer special treatment for military personnel with Permanent Change of Station (PCS) orders: Service members who are being relocated will be automatically eligible for short sales, even if they are current on their existing mortgages, and will be under no obligation to contribute funds to cover the shortfall between the outstanding loan balance and the sales price on their homes.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will offer up to $6,000 to second lien holders to expedite a short sale. Previously, second lien holders could slow down the short sale process by negotiating for higher amounts.

Short sales are already more common than foreclosures in many areas, and these new guidelines will probably lead to an even higher percentage of short sales next year (compared to foreclosures).

More from Fannie Mae: Fannie Mae Announces New Short Sale Guidelines

Under the new guidelines, servicers will be permitted to approve a short sale for borrowers who have certain hardships but have not yet gone into default. Those hardships include the death of a borrower or co-borrower, divorce or legal separation, illness or disability or a distant employment transfer. In addition, Fannie Mae is significantly reducing the documentation required to complete a short sale, including requiring no documentation of a borrower’s hardship 90 days or more delinquent and have a credit score lower than 620. This will remove barriers for those homeowners who are most in danger of foreclosure and increase servicer efficiency in completing a short sale.

Fannie Mae will also limit subordinate-lien payments to $6,000. Previously, subordinate lien holders often attempted to negotiate higher payments. The servicer will be able to offer the maximum payment of $6,000 in order to facilitate the transaction. By setting a standard payout amount and a limit for every transaction, Fannie Mae is removing the guess work and standardizing the transaction to help accelerate the short sale process.

... Fannie Mae completed 38,717 short sales through the first six months of 2012 and 70,025 in full year 2011.

by Calculated Risk on 8/21/2012 01:06:00 PM

Two weeks ago I posted a graph of mortgage delinquencies by state. This raised a question of how the current delinquency rate compares to before the crisis - and also a comparison to the peak of the delinquency crisis in each state.

The following graph shows the range of percent seriously delinquent and in-foreclosure for each state (dashed blue line) since 2007. The red diamond indicates the current serious delinquency rate (this includes 90+ days delinquent or in the foreclosure process).

Click on graph for larger image.

Many states have seen declines, and several states have seen significant declines in the serious delinquency rate including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and California. Other states, like New Jersey and New York, have made little or no progress in reducing serious delinquencies.

Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and California are all non-judicial foreclosure states. States with little progress like New Jersey and New York are judicial states. Florida is a judicial states - and has the highest serious deliquency rate - but Florida has seen some improvement.

The second graph shows total delinquencies (including less than 90 days) and in-foreclosure.

Although some states have seen significant declines in delinquency rates, all states are still above the Q1 2007 levels - and some states have seen little progress.

by Calculated Risk on 8/21/2012 10:17:00 AM

From the Philly Fed:

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has released the coincident indexes for the 50 states for July 2012. In the past month, the indexes increased in 22 states, decreased in 17, and remained stable in 11, for a one-month diffusion index of 10. Over the past three months, the indexes increased in 32 states, decreased in 14, and remained stable in four, for a three-month diffusion index of 36.

Note: These are coincident indexes constructed from state employment data. From the Philly Fed:

The coincident indexes combine four state-level indicators to summarize current economic conditions in a single statistic. The four state-level variables in each coincident index are nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, the unemployment rate, and wage and salary disbursements deflated by the consumer price index (U.S. city average). The trend for each state’s index is set to the trend of its gross domestic product (GDP), so long-term growth in the state’s index matches long-term growth in its GDP.

Click on graph for larger image.

This is a graph is of the number of states with one month increasing activity according to the Philly Fed. This graph includes states with minor increases (the Philly Fed lists as unchanged).

In July, 30 states had increasing activity, down from 35 in June. The last three months have been weak following eight months of widespread growth geographically. The number of states with increasing activity is at the lowest level since January 2010.

Here is a map of the three month change in the Philly Fed state coincident indicators. This map was all red during the worst of the recession.

And the map was all green just just a few months ago.

Now there are a number of red states again.

by Calculated Risk on 8/21/2012 08:22:00 AM

From Bloomberg: Germany’s Barthle Says ‘Small Concessions’ Possible for Greece

“Small concessions are feasible provided they are strictly made within the framework of the second aid program,” [Norbert Barthle, the CDU budget spokesman in parliament] said. “For instance, the interest and maturity on loans could be adjusted, as in the case of the first aid package” for Greece. “What’s utterly important is the will of the Greeks to fulfil the terms of financial help. The ball is in the Greeks’ court.”

On Friday, Greek Prime Minister Samaras and German Chancellor Merkel will meet in Berlin with a press conference to follow. Europe is about to take center stage once again ...

by Calculated Risk on 8/20/2012 07:34:00 PM

Fed Working Paper by Paolo Gelain, Norges Bank, Kevin Lansing, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Norges Bank, and Caterina Mendicino, Bank of Portugal: House Prices, Credit Growth, and Excess Volatility: Implications for Monetary and Macroprudential Policy

The researchers looked at the house bubble and several possible policy responses. It appears the most effective policy - for limiting the bubble - would have been to require lenders to focus more on loan-to-income.

From the paper:

Our final policy experiment achieves a countercyclical loan-to-value ratio in a novel way by requiring lenders to place a substantial weight on the borrower’s wage income in the borrowing constraint. As the weight on the borrower’s wage income increases, the generalized borrowing constraint takes on more of the characteristics of a loan-to-income constraint. Intuitively, a loan-to-income constraint represents a more prudent lending criterion than a loan-to-value constraint because income, unlike asset value, is less subject to distortions from bubble-like movements in asset prices. Figure 4 [see below] shows that during the U.S. housing boom of the mid-2000s, loan-to-value measures did not signal any significant increase in household leverage because the value of housing assets rose together with liabilities. Only after the collapse of house prices did the loan-to-value measures provide an indication of excessive household leverage. But by then, the over-accumulation of household debt had already occurred. By contrast, the ratio of U.S. household debt to disposable personal income started to rise rapidly about five years earlier, providing regulators with a more timely warning of a potentially dangerous buildup of household leverage.

We show that the generalized borrowing constraint serves as an “automatic stabilizer” by inducing an endogenously countercyclical loan-to-value ratio. In our view, it is much easier and more realistic for regulators to simply mandate a substantial emphasis on the borrowers’ wage income in the lending decision than to expect regulators to frequently adjust the maximum loan-to-value ratio in a systematic way over the business cycle or the financial/credit cycle.
...
... the most successful stabilization policy in our model calls for lending behavior that is basically the opposite of what was observed during U.S. housing boom of the mid-2000s. As the boom progressed, U.S. lenders placed less emphasis on the borrower’s wage income and more emphasis on expected future house prices. So-called “no-doc” and “low-doc” loans became increasingly popular. Loans were approved that could only perform if house prices continued to rise, thereby allowing borrowers to refinance. It retrospect, it seems likely that stricter adherence to prudent loan-to-income guidelines would have forestalled much of the housing boom, such that the subsequent reversal and the resulting financial turmoil would have been less severe.

Click on graph for larger image.

From the paper:

Figure 4: During the U.S. housing boom of the mid-2000s, loan-to-value measures did not signal a significant increase in household leverage because the value of housing assets rose together with liabilities. In contrast, the debt-to-income ratio provided a much earlier warning signal of a potentially dangerous buildup of household leverage.

Something to remember when the next lending bubble comes along. Also note that debt-to-income is still very high and there is more deleveraging to come.

by Calculated Risk on 8/20/2012 04:55:00 PM

David Leonhardt writes at Economix: The 14 Potential Causes of the Income Slump

Why has median household income just endured its worst 12-year stretch since the Great Depression?

The immediate answer to that question is that economic growth has slowed and inequality has risen. The pie isn’t growing very quickly, and the few new slices are going to a disproportionately small portion of the population.

But that answer is really just an accounting answer. The more important questions are why economic growth has slowed and why inequality has risen – not just over the last 12 years but, less severely, since the early 1970s as well.

Leonhardt has a poll for readers to rank 14 potential causes on why American household income has stagnated including globalization, demographics, fiscal policy, innovation and much more. Leonhardt concludes:

In coming days, I’ll be writing posts about what economists see as the major causes.

Should be in interesting series.

by Calculated Risk on 8/20/2012 01:42:00 PM

In addition to Case-Shiller, CoreLogic, and LPS, I'm also watching the FNC, Zillow and other house price indexes.

FNC released their June index data today. FNC reported that their Residential Price Index™ (RPI) indicates that U.S. residential property values increased 1.1% in June (Composite 100 index). The other RPIs (10-MSA, 20-MSA, 30-MSA) increased between 1.1% and 1.3% in June. These indexes are not seasonally adjusted (NSA), and are for non-distressed home sales (excluding foreclosure auction sales, REO sales, and short sales).

The year-over-year trends continued to show improvement in June, with the 100-MSA composite down 0.2% compared to June 2011. This is the smallest year-over-year decline in the FNC index since year-over-year prices started declining in 2007 (five years ago).

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph is based on the FNC index (four composites) through June 2012. The FNC indexes are hedonic price indexes using a blend of sold homes and real-time appraisals.

Some of the month-to-month gain is seasonal since this index is NSA. The key is the indexes are showing less of a year-over-year decline in June. If house prices have bottomed, the year-over-year decline should turn positive soon.

The June Case-Shiller index will be released Tuesday, August 28th.

by Calculated Risk on 8/20/2012 11:20:00 AM

Binyamin Appelbaum at the NY Times reviews some of the Obama administration's missed opportunities: Cautious Moves on Foreclosures Haunting Obama Here is an excerpt on mortgage cramdowns:

Former Representative Jim Marshall, a centrist Georgia Democrat who lost his House seat in 2010, was a staunch advocate of the administration’s economic policies. He supported the banking bailout. He opposed a similar bailout for homeowners.

The administration made just one mistake, he said in a recent interview: it failed to rewrite the bankruptcy code.

Congressional Democrats wanted to change the law to permit “cramdown” — a term that meant letting bankruptcy courts cut mortgage debts — to put pressure on mortgage companies to modify loans and to provide a backup plan for borrowers who could not get the help they needed.

“There was another way to deal with this, and that is what I supported: forcing the banks to deal with this,” Mr. Marshall said. “It would have been better for the economy and lots of different neighborhoods and people owning houses in those neighborhoods.”

Mr. Obama sponsored cramdown legislation as a senator, endorsed it as a presidential candidate and called on Congress to pass it in the Arizona speech.

But he also repeatedly pressed the pause button. When proponents sought to add a cramdown to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in September 2008, Mr. Obama, who had flown back to Washington from the campaign trail, persuaded them to postpone the “partisan” effort as an example to Republicans, who said the measure would violate existing contracts.

In February 2009, after Mr. Obama became president, the White House asked Democrats not to attach the measure to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, fearing it would cost votes. In March, a watered-down version finally passed the House, but the mortgage industry rallied opposition to block it in the Senate.

Some officials said the White House had tried and failed. But other officials and participants, including Mr. Marshall, said it simply was not a priority.

“There wasn’t enough political capital, time or energy,” said Mr. Barr, the former Treasury deputy.

Both Tanta and I urged changing the bankruptcy laws to allow mortgage cramdowns. Here was a piece from Tanta in 2007 (yes, 2007) explaining mortgage cramdowns and why they were the appropriate policy: Just Say Yes To Cram Downs (For new readers, Tanta was my former co-blogger and mortgage banker. You can read about her here).

Cramdowns in bankruptcy are still an appropriate policy, and hopefully the candidates will be asked in the debates about what policies they will pursue to help the unemployed and to address foreclosures - and be asked specifically about cramdowns.

by Calculated Risk on 8/20/2012 08:30:00 AM

The Chicago Fed released the national activity index (a composite index of other indicators): Index shows economic activity increased in July

Led by improvements in production-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) increased to –0.13 in July from –0.34 in June. ...

The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, decreased slightly from –0.18 in June to –0.21 in July—its fifth consecutive reading below zero. July’s CFNAI-MA3 suggests that growth in national economic activity was below its historical trend. The economic growth reflected in this level of the CFNAI-MA3 suggests subdued inflationary pressure from economic activity over the coming year.

This graph shows the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (three month moving average) since 1967.

Click on graph for larger image.

This suggests growth was below trend in July.

According to the Chicago Fed:

A zero value for the index indicates that the national economy is expanding at its historical trend rate of growth; negative values indicate below-average growth; and positive values indicate above-average growth.