Yesterday I saw a great talk by Paul Willen of the Boston Fed. An earlier version of the paper he gave is here.
I don't think I am caricaturing what he said to say when I describe the following takeaways from his talk:
(1) Falling house prices lead to defaults more than defaults lead to falling house prices. In the early
part of the decade, when delinquencies reached record levels, default rates remained extremely low, because house prices were rising (see his graph on Page 48).
(2) Interest rate resets have little if anything to do with the large number of defaults we are observing. For the vast majority of subprime loans, defaults or refinances happen before resets take place. It is moreover the case that the size of the resets is smaller than most of us think, because the initial teaser rates are pretty high.
(3) While ARMs have higher default rates than FRMs, putting ARM borrowers into FRMs will not necessarily reduce defaults. In the first place, as people move out of ARMs into FRMs, the denominator in the default proportion ratio will decline for ARMs, while increasing for FRMs, meaning that if the number defaults stay constant, the default share in ARMs will still rise.
Beyond this last point, a working paper I have with Cutts and Ramogopal shows that ARM borrower are fundamentally more likely to be risk-takers than FRM borrowers, so the difference in loan performance between the two products may say more about the distributions of the different borrowers, rather than the products themselves.
In any case, all of this means that many of the policies being pushed at the moment (such as interest rate freezes) may not be particularly helpful in resolving the crisis.
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I gave the paper a quick scan. The main assertion regarding the importance of house price appreciation on foreclosures seems solid.
But I question the strength of the point regarding the impact of defaults on prices. The graph on pg. 48 is a tad too technical for me. But common sense says that the interplay between defaults and house prices don't operate in a vacuum. There are at least two other variables that are very important: demand and affordability.
Demand and affordability are very different now than they were in the early part of this decade. I think that will change the relationship between defaults and house prices. There were ready buyers for defaults in 2002 at prices similar to the outstanding mortgage. I don't think that is the case in 2008. I think we can expect that the inventory created by upcoming defaults will only clear at lower prices.
What are the alternatives for policymakers?
I think that's a tough question to answer, but there is one guiding principle that policymakers should keep in mind: they should avoid standing in the way of natural market forces.
Excess inventory should be allowed to clear at market prices. The experience right now in the inland cities of California is that vacant homes invite crime and blight. Homes should be sold ASAP to people who will live in them and pay the mortgage. The buyers are out there if the price is right. Any policy that results in long-term vacancies is probably the wrong policy for our cities.
Brian I couldn't agree with you more they need to be sold at market prices.
We are at a low and let them sell someday they will be glad and have made a great investment.
To those who had to leave was to be expected in that type of ARM loan. Unless they were forced into those loans and to those people as the lenders are prosecuted should be offered to return to there home with a loan they qualify for.
Listening to Willen, I think he ignores the role loosening credit standards played in causing the housing bubble. When the bubble bursts (i.e. prices fall) foreclosures result, but that was an inevitable result of the poor lending standards. Ignoring this drastically alters the framework of the policy debate on what to do, and how to prevent this from happening again.
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