Obama Administration Plans Exit From Mortgage Markets

Mortgage rates have remained low over the past year as the Obama Administration has used federal support to drive down rates in order to revive home buying. Keeping interest rates at historic lows cost an investment of over $1 trillion and was considered a key ingredient to stabilizing the housing industry and re-booting the economy.

The announcement has been made that the wind-down of government support for mortgage rates has begun and will be completed within two months. "We did what we thought was necessary to stabilize the market, but we don't think the government should continue special efforts forever," said Michael S. Barr, an assistant secretary at the Treasury Department. "As you bring stability, private participants come back in. We do expect this now that the market has stabilized. I'm not going to say there will be no effect on rates, but we do think you are seeing market signs and market signals that there should be an orderly transition."

This will be the test of whether the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have succeeded in jump-starting the housing market and ensuring it can hold its own. What will be interesting is to see the impact it will have on interest rates in both the immediate and long term future. The mortgage industry depends on the private sector to fund it via mortgage-related securities. As the economy softened, the Fed and Treasury became the only major buyer of these securities. At the same time, the federal government stood behind mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by taking them over and pledging to cover their losses. Has the mortgage industry become too dependent on government support? In our dialogs with both buyers and sellers, financing is a key ingredient to any transaction. We are seeing more requests for All Cash, Seller Financing or Lease/Purchase to generate more creative ways to navigate the financing issue.

As the economy began to recover, the Treasury ended its purchase of these securities in December and the Fed is winding down it purchases to end March 31st. We will be watching closely to see the impact this will have in our market.

Mortgage Qualification Tightens

Remember when five years ago, if your application for a mortgage included a 20 percent downpayment, your bank would have approved your loan by sundown and sponsored a parade in your honor? With the onset of tightening credit, a large down payment no longer guarantees you’ll qualify for a mortgage. "Starting this week, mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae will require borrowers with a 20 percent downpayment to have a credit score of at least 620. Previously, the cutoff was 580. Fannie Mae buys loans, providing an important source of financing for lenders. For that reason, its guidelines are considered the gold standard for mortgage loans. Most banks are expected to adopt the new standards, if they haven’t already. 'Credit scores have never mattered quite as much as they do now,' says Bob Walters, chief economist for Quicken Loans. In addition, Fannie Mae won’t approve loans for borrowers with a 20 percent downpayment if more than 45 percent of their gross monthly income goes toward debt. Fannie Mae didn’t disclose the previous debt limit, but it was higher than 45 percent, says Fannie Mae spokesman Brian Faith."

If you’ve already found a home you’d like to buy, there’s not much you can do to raise your score before you apply for a loan. But if you’re just starting to tour open houses, there are steps you can take to improve your credit profile, including:
• Review your credit reports for errors. Go to AnnualCreditReport.com and order your credit reports from the three main credit-reporting bureaus: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. You’re entitled to a free credit report once a year from all three of the bureaus, but only if you go through this website. Once you receive your credit reports, go through them and look for inaccurate information, such as accounts you never opened. All of the credit bureaus provide a process to dispute errors, says Craig Watts, spokesman for Fair Isaac, which created the widely used FICO score.
• Pay off credit cards and other debts. One of the factors used to calculate your credit score is your “credit utilization ratio,” which measures the amount of credit you have outstanding vs. your total available credit. This ratio accounts for 30 percent of your score. Paying off balances will increase the amount of unused credit you have available, which will help your score. But even if you’ve decided never to use credit cards again, don’t close your accounts. Closing a credit card account won’t help your credit score and could hurt it, Watts says. When you close an account, you reduce the amount of your available credit, which could hurt your credit utilization ratio.
• Avoid opening any new accounts. “Every new account you open is likely to drop your credit score, at least a little,” Watts says. Checking your score When you order your free credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com, your credit scores aren’t included; you’ll have to pay a fee to get them. In recent months, though, several services, such as Quizzle, Credit Karma and Credit.com have launched programs that provide free credit profiles. These websites can provide a useful snapshot of your credit standing and provide tips on how to improve it, Detweiler says. If you’re planning to buy a home a year from now, she adds, it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money to buy scores that could change by the time you apply for a loan. But house hunters who plan to apply for a loan in the next few weeks should know their actual FICO scores, because that’s the score most potential lenders use, Detweiler says. You can buy your FICO score and credit report from TransUnion and Equifax at http://www.myfico.com/ for $15.95 each. Earlier this year, Experian stopped selling to consumers the FICO scores it provides lenders, Watts says. You can buy a credit score based on Experian’s own scoring model for $15 at http://www.experian.com/ .

* December 15, 2009 - Information From USA Today