Mortgage Origination Research Articles

Discussion

Discussion

Consumer risk appetite, the credit cycle and the housing bubble

In this paper, we explore the role of consumer risk appetite in the initiation of credit cycles and as an early trigger of the US mortgage crisis. We analyze a panel data set of mortgages originated between 2000 and 2009 and follow their performance up to 2014. After controlling for all of the usual observable effects, we show that a strong residual vintage effect remains. This vintage effect correlates well with consumer mortgage demand, as measured by the Federal Reserve Board’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, and with changes in mortgage pricing at the time the loan was originated. Our findings are consistent with an economic environment in which the incentives of low-risk consumers to obtain a mortgage decrease when the cost of obtaining a loan rises. As a result, mortgage originators generate mortgages from a pool of consumers with changing risk profiles over the credit cycle. The unobservable component of the shift in credit risk, relative to the usual underwriting criteria, may be thought of as macroeconomic adverse selection.

Leverage Regulation and Market Structure: An Empirical Model of the UK Mortgage Market

I develop a structural model of mortgage demand and lender competition to study how leverage regulation a ffects the equilibrium in the UK mortgage market. Using variation in risk-weighted capital requirements jointly across lenders and mortgages with di fferential loan-to-values, I show that a one-percentage-point increase in risk-weighted capital requirements increases lenders' marginal cost of originating mortgages by about 26 basis points (11 percent) for the average mortgage product. I use the estimated model to study proposed leverage regulations. Counterfactual analyses show that large lenders exploit a regulatory cost advantage, which increases concentration of mortgage originations by about 20 percent, and suggest that banning high loan-to-value mortgages may reduce large lenders' equity bu er.

Mortgage Experiences of Rural Borrowers in the United States: Insights from the National Survey of Mortgage Originations

To date, research on rural mortgage markets in the United States has been limited by a lack of data on the specific mortgage experiences of borrowers living in rural areas. To fill this data gap, the National Survey of Mortgage Originations (NSMO) conducted a survey that oversampled people who took out mortgages in completely rural counties in 2014. This paper reports results from this survey, contrasting the characteristics, experiences, and loan terms of mortgage borrowers in completely rural counties to those of borrowers in metropolitan and other non-metropolitan areas. Completely rural counties are those with no urban cluster or an urban population less than 2,500. We find that borrowers in completely rural counties paid slightly higher interest rates on average and were less satisfied that their mortgage was the one with the best terms to fit their needs than borrowers in other areas. These results persist even after controlling for income, credit quality, and other borrower characteristics. Completely rural borrowers were less likely than other borrowers to be satisfied with the mortgage closing process, the timeliness of disclosures, and the disclosure documents themselves. Finally, compared with borrowers in more urban areas, borrowers in completely rural areas tend to be less confident or knowledgeable about some details of mortgages, and they are more likely to initiate contact with their lender.

The financial services industry and society

Purpose This paper aims to present an analysis of the role of financial incentives, moral hazard and conflicts of interests leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach The study’s analysis has identified common structural flaws throughout the securitization food chain. These structural flaws include inappropriate incentives, the absence of punishment, moral hazard and conflicts of interest. This research sees the full impact of these structural flaws when considering their co-occurrence throughout the financial system. The authors address systemic defects in the securitization food chain and examine the inter-relationships among homeowners, mortgage originators, investment banks and investors. The authors also address the role of exogenous factors, including the SEC, AIG, the credit rating agencies, Congress, business academia and the business media. Findings The study argues that the lack of criminal prosecutions of key financial executives has been a key factor in creating moral hazard. Eight years after the Great Recession ended in the USA, the financial services industry continues to suffer from a crisis of trust with society. Practical implications An overwhelming majority of Americans, 89 per cent, believe that the federal government does a poor job of regulating the financial services industry (Puzzanghera, 2014). A study argues that the current corporate lobbying framework undermines societal expectations of political equality and consent (Alzola, 2013). The authors believe the Singapore model may be a useful starting point to restructure regulatory agencies so that they are more responsive to societal concerns and less responsive to special interests. Finally, the widespread perception is that the financial services sector, in particular, is ethically challenged (Ferguson, 2012); perhaps there would be some benefit from the implementation of ethical climate monitoring in firms that have been subject to deferred prosecution agreements for serious ethical violations (Arnaud, 2010). Originality/value The authors believe the paper makes a truly original contribution. They provide new insights via their analysis of the role of financial incentives, moral hazard and conflicts of interests leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The Impact of Higher Interest Rates on the Mortgage Market

Over the past 35 years, we have witnessed a tremendous secular decline in interest rates. Mortgage rates peaked at over 18% in 1981 and were down to 3.54% by the fall of 2016. Rates have now begun to rise, and although it is not clear how high they will go, it is clear that the secular decline in rates is over. This article identifies and examines six impacts on the mortgage market due to the end of the secular decline in interest rates: (1) decrease in mortgage origination volumes, (2) lower originator profitability and more industry consolidation, (3) slower prepayment speeds, (4) higher home prices, (5) weak repeat homebuyer activity, and (6) possibility of the second lien market.

When Real Estate is the Only Game in Town

The excesses of the historic US housing cycle of the 2000s were concentrated in the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) of Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada. Even controlling for leading explanations of this housing cycle, these Sand State MSAs had more than double the mortgage originations, defaults and price fluctuations than other MSAs. We show that these excesses can be explained by Sand State MSAs having an abnormally low supply of publicly traded firms headquartered there relative to total income. Households in these MSAs are more likely to purchase investment homes nearby rather than stocks, amplifying the housing cycle there.

Does a Larger Menu Increase Appetite? Collateral Eligibility and Credit Supply

We examine a change in the European Central Bank’s collateral framework, which significantly lowered the rating requirement for eligible residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), and its impact on bank lending and risk-taking in the Netherlands. Banks most affected by the policy increase loan supply and lower interest rates on new mortgage originations. These lower-interest-rate loans serve as collateral for newly issued RMBS with lower-rated tranches and subsequently experience worse repayment performance. The performance deterioration is pronounced among loans with state guarantees, which suggests that looser collateral requirements may lead to undesired credit risk transfer to the sovereign.

Does Skin-In-The-Game Discipline Risk Management? Evidence from Mortgage Insurance

Many mortgage reform proposals suggest replacing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) with private entities. A common assumption underlying these proposals is that unlike the GSEs, private insurers will properly manage risk and set fair prices. Inconsistent with this assumption, this paper presents evidence that private insurers less effectively managed home price risks during the 2000-2006 housing boom than the GSEs did. Mortgage origination data reveal that the GSEs were selecting loans with increasingly higher percentages of down payments, or lower loan to value ratios (LTVs), in boom areas than in other areas. These lower LTVs in boom areas reduced the GSEs’ exposure to overheated markets. Furthermore, the decline of LTVs in boom areas stems entirely from the segment insured by the GSEs only, and none of the decline stems from the segment where private mortgage insurers take the first loss position. Private insurers also did not lower their exposure to home price risks along other dimensions, including the percentage of high LTV GSE loans they insured and the percentage of insured mortgage balance. My results highlight that post-crisis reform of the mortgage insurance industry should carefully consider additional factors besides moral hazard induced by the government guarantees, such as mortgage insurers’ future home price assumptions and the industry organization of the mortgage origination chain.

International Real Estate Review

Concentration amongst the top 100 mortgage originators rose substantially during the Great Recession. Furthermore, Originator Profits and Unmeasured Costs (OPUCs), a proxy measure of the profit from originating residential mortgage loans also rose over the same period. Recent studies suggest that these increases are only partially explained by rational factors such as rising costs from increased regulatory burdens and changes in risk. We find statistically significant evidence that increasing concentration raised loan costs by 97 basis points using Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models during the Great Recession. This finding suggests that banks are exploiting increasing monopolistic power to increase profits and as such, consumers face rising costs as competition amongst lenders declines. Further to this issue, this study suggests that mortgage markets are not fully competitive and that the rates and fees charged to borrowers are in fact impacted by the level of competition amongst lenders.

Measuring Mortgage Credit Availability: A Frontier Estimation Approach

We construct a new measure of mortgage credit availability that describes the maximum amount obtainable by a borrower of given characteristics. We estimate this "loan frontier" using mortgage originations data from 2001 to 2014 and show that it reflects a binding borrowing constraint. Our estimates reveal that the expansion of mortgage credit during the housing boom was substantial for all borrowers, not only for low-score or low-income borrowers. The contraction was most pronounced for low-score borrowers. Using variation in the frontier across metropolitan areas over time, we show that borrowing constraints played an important role in the recent housing cycle.

Endogenous current coupons

We consider the problem of identifying current coupons for agency-backed to-be-announced pools of residential mortgages. Such coupons, or mortgage origination rates, ensure par-valued pools. In a doubly stochastic reduced form model which allows prepayment intensities to depend upon both current and origination mortgage rates, as well as underlying investment factors, we identify the current coupon as a solution to a degenerate elliptic, nonlinear fixed point problem. Using Schaefer’s theorem, we prove existence of a current coupon. We also provide an explicit approximation to the fixed point, valid for compact perturbations off a baseline factor-based intensity model. A numerical example is provided which shows that the approximation performs well in estimating the current coupon.

FHA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Great Recession

Did government mortgage programs mitigate the adverse economic effects of the financial crisis? We find that counties with greater participation in traditional government mortgage programs experienced less severe economic downturns during the Great Recession. In particular, counties with higher levels of participation in FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac lending had relatively smaller increases in mortgage delinquency rates; smaller declines in purchase originations, home sales, home prices, and new automobile purchases; and smaller increases in unemployment rates. These results hold both in 2009 (soon after the peak of the financial crisis) and in 2014 (six years after the crisis). The persistence of better economic outcomes in these counties is consistent with a view that mortgage originators' access to a liquidity outlet (in this case, government-backed securitization) is key to maintaining credit flows and economic growth during financial turmoil.

Recourse and residential mortgages: The case of Nevada

The state of Nevada passed legislation in 2009 that abolished deficiency judgments for purchase mortgage loans made after October 1, 2009, and collateralized by primary single-family homes. In this paper, we study how this change in the law affected equilibrium mortgage lending. Using unique mortgage loan-level application data and a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the qualification criterion, we find that the law change led to a decline in equilibrium loan sizes of about 1 to 2 percent. There exists some evidence that mortgage approval rates also decreased for the affected loan applications. These results suggest that making the deficiency judgment law more default friendly in Nevada generated material cost on borrowers at the time of mortgage origination.

A spatial panel data model with time varying endogenous weights matrices and common factors

Many spatial panel data sets exhibit cross sectional and/or intertemporal dependence from spatial interactions or common factors. In an application of a spatial autoregressive model, a spatial weights matrix may be constructed from variables that may correlate with unobservables in the main equation and therefore is endogenous. Some common factors may be unobserved and correlate with included regressors in the equation. This paper presents a unified approach to model spatial panels with endogenous time varying spatial weights matrices and unobserved common factors. We show that the proposed QML estimator is consistent and asymptotically normal. As its limiting distribution may have a leading order bias, an analytical bias correction is proposed. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate good finite sample properties of the estimators. This model is empirically applied to examine the effects of house price dynamics on reverse mortgage origination rates in the United States.

The effect of large investors on asset quality: Evidence from subprime mortgage securities

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs), the dominant investors in subprime mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 crisis, substantively affected collateral composition in this market. Mortgages included in securities designed for the GSEs performed better than those backing other securities in the same deals, holding observable risk constant. Consistent with the transmission of private information, these effects are concentrated in low-documentation loans and for issuers that were highly dependent on the GSEs and were corporate affiliates of the mortgage originators. Additional analysis of yield spreads shows that these performance differences were not reflected in prices.

Does Tighter Bank Regulation Affect Mortgage Originations?

Financial regulation can affect both the size and composition of markets, and understanding those effects is critical to determine the extent to which such regulation hinders credit availability. In this paper, we study the effect of tighter banking regulation on the US residential mortgage market: a market characterized by lenders subject to different degrees of regulation. We disentangle the impact of tighter banking regulation from confounding factors related to the underlying business cycle by exploiting cross-sectional heterogeneity in the exposure of different lenders and different geographies to the policy change. We find that the regulation has resulted in a change in the composition of the market - less regulated banks and non-bank mortgage companies now have a larger share of the origination market. However, since the tightening of the bank regulations, the counties most dependent on lending from the most heavily regulated banks have not experienced significantly slower aggregate origination or house price growth than less dependent counties.

The Bancorp: The Long Lasting Effect of an 'Extend and Pretend' Commercial Mortgage Operation

Systemic problems with mortgage loan operations -- originations and modifications -- are flows which are capitalized into a long-dated assets or stocks. Correcting bad origination practices, or changing the flows, does not change the prior stocks created by the flows. There were systemic problems with the origination and securitization of subprime residential mortgages a decade ago. The flawed origination process was stopped years ago, but the troubled loans still produce losses to this day.This papers examine the continuing problems of The Bancorp, who discontinued a commercial loan operation in late 2014. Court document provide evidence that the bank sanctioned a practice extend and pretend loan modifications.We provide estimates of future loan losses.

Ditching the Middle Class with Financial Regulation

We analyze the effects of a recent piece of consumer protection regulation -- Dodd-Frank -- on mortgage originations. Dodd-Frank aimed at reducing mortgage fees and abuses against vulnerable borrowers, but increased the costs of originating mortgages. We find it triggered a substantial redistribution of credit from middle-class households to wealthy households. Lenders reduced credit to middle-class households by 15%, and increased it to wealthy households by 21%, after controlling for drivers of the demand for housing, local house prices, and foreclosures. Large lenders found it less costly to react to Dodd-Frank. We thus instrument households' exposure to Dodd-Frank with the pre-crisis share of mortgages originated by large lenders in each county. The redistribution of credit from the middle-class to the wealthy was higher in counties more exposed to large lenders, which are similar to other counties. Results hold at the individual-loan level and zip-code level, at the intensive margin (amount lent) and extensive margin (number of loans originated), and for accepted and rejected loans. Changes in the distribution of refinancing loans do not explain the results.

Homeownership and Nontraditional and Subprime Mortgages

This article documents the growth and geographic distribution of nontraditional mortgages (NTMs) and subprime mortgages during 2000-2006, and examines the association between these products and homeownership at the county level between 2000 and 2012. It finds a significant relationship between the origination of NTM and subprime mortgages during the boom and changes in the number of homeowners (positive during the 2000-2006 period and negative during the 2006-2012 period) but no significant relationship with the change in the homeownership rate. Looking at specific categories of the population, the results indicate a positive relationship between the presence of NTMs and subprime mortgages and increased numbers of homeowners for young households as well as for low income and minority households, but the relationship is smaller than for the general population. Overall, the relationship between NTMs and homeownership is stronger than the relationship between subprime mortgages and homeownership during the boom and it is less negative during the bust.