Interest Rates Have Nowhere to Go but Up

On Sunday April 11, 2010, 1:00 pm EDT

Even as prospects for the American economy brighten, consumers are about to face a new financial burden: a sustained period of rising interest rates.

That, economists say, is the inevitable outcome of the nation’s ballooning debt and the renewed prospect of inflation as the economy recovers from the depths of the recent recession.

The shift is sure to come as a shock to consumers whose spending habits were shaped by a historic 30-year decline in the cost of borrowing.

“Americans have assumed the roller coaster goes one way,” said Bill Gross, whose investment firm, Pimco, has taken part in a broad sell-off of government debt, which has pushed up interest rates. “It’s been a great thrill as rates descended, but now we face an extended climb.”

The impact of higher rates is likely to be felt first in the housing market, which has only recently begun to rebound from a deep slump. The rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has risen half a point since December, hitting 5.31 last week, the highest level since last summer.

Along with the sell-off in bonds, the Federal Reserve has halted its emergency $1.25 trillion program to buy mortgage debt, placing even more upward pressure on rates.

“Mortgage rates are unlikely to go lower than they are now, and if they go higher, we’re likely to see a reversal of the gains in the housing market,” said Christopher J. Mayer, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School. “It’s a really big risk.”

Each increase of 1 percentage point in rates adds as much as 19 percent to the total cost of a home, according to Mr. Mayer.

The Mortgage Bankers Association expects the rise to continue, with the 30-year mortgage rate going to 5.5 percent by late summer and as high as 6 percent by the end of the year.

Another area in which higher rates are likely to affect consumers is credit card use. And last week, the Federal Reserve reported that the average interest rate on credit cards reached 14.26 percent in February, the highest since 2001. That is up from 12.03 percent when rates bottomed in the fourth quarter of 2008 — a jump that amounts to about $200 a year in additional interest payments for the typical American household.

With losses from credit card defaults rising and with capital to back credit cards harder to come by, issuers are likely to increase rates to 16 or 17 percent by the fall, according to Dennis Moroney, a research director at the Tower Group, a financial research company.

“The banks don’t have a lot of pricing options,” Mr. Moroney said. “They’re targeting people who carry a balance from month to month.”

Similarly, many car loans have already become significantly more expensive, with rates at auto finance companies rising to 4.72 percent in February from 3.26 percent in December, according to the Federal Reserve.

Washington, too, is expecting to have to pay more to borrow the money it needs for programs. The Office of Management and Budget expects the rate on the benchmark 10-year United States Treasury note to remain close to 3.9 percent for the rest of the year, but then rise to 4.5 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2012.

The run-up in rates is quickening as investors steer more of their money away from bonds and as Washington unplugs the economic life support programs that kept rates low through the financial crisis. Mortgage rates and car loans are linked to the yield on long-term bonds.

Besides the inflation fears set off by the strengthening economy, Mr. Gross said he was also wary of Treasury bonds because he feared the burgeoning supply of new debt issued to finance the government’s huge budget deficits would overwhelm demand, driving interest rates higher.

Nine months ago, United States government debt accounted for half of the assets in Mr. Gross’s flagship fund, Pimco Total Return. That has shrunk to 30 percent now — the lowest ever in the fund’s 23-year history — as Mr. Gross has sold American bonds in favor of debt from Europe, particularly Germany, as well as from developing countries like Brazil.

Last week, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note briefly crossed the psychologically important threshold of 4 percent, as the Treasury auctioned off $82 billion in new debt. That is nearly twice as much as the government paid in the fall of 2008, when investors sought out ultra safe assets like Treasury securities after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the credit crisis.

Though still very low by historical standards, the rise of bond yields since then is reversing a decline that began in 1981, when 10-year note yields reached nearly 16 percent.

From that peak, steadily dropping interest rates have fed a three-decade lending boom, during which American consumers borrowed more and more but managed to hold down the portion of their income devoted to paying off loans.

Indeed, total household debt is now nine times what it was in 1981 — rising twice as fast as disposable income over the same period — yet the portion of disposable income that goes toward covering that debt has budged only slightly, increasing to 12.6 percent from 10.7 percent.

Household debt has been dropping for the last two years as recession-battered consumers cut back on borrowing, but at $13.5 trillion, it still exceeds disposable income by $2.5 trillion.

The long decline in rates also helped prop up the stock market; lower rates for investments like bonds make stocks more attractive.

That tailwind, which prevented even worse economic pain during the recession, has ceased, according to interviews with economists, analysts and money managers.

“We’ve had almost a 30-year rally,” said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor’s. “That’s come to an end.”

Just as significant as the bottom-line impact will be the psychological fallout from not being able to buy more while paying less — an unusual state of affairs that made consumer spending the most important measure of economic health.

“We’ve gotten spoiled by the idea that interest rates will stay in the low single-digits forever,” said Jim Caron, an interest rate strategist with Morgan Stanley. “We’ve also had a generation of consumers and investors get used to low rates.”

For young home buyers today considering 30-year mortgages with a rate of just over 5 percent, it might be hard to conceive of a time like October 1981, when mortgage rates peaked at 18.2 percent. That meant monthly payments of $1,523 then compared with $556 now for a $100,000 loan.

No one expects rates to return to anything resembling 1981 levels. Still, for much of Wall Street, the question is not whether rates will go up, but rather by how much.

Some firms, like Morgan Stanley, are predicting that rates could rise by a percentage point and a half by the end of the year. Others, like JPMorgan Chase are forecasting a more modest half-point jump.

But the consensus is clear, according to Terrence M. Belton, global head of fixed-income strategy for J. P. Morgan Securities. “Everyone knows that rates will eventually go higher,” he said.

 

Foreclosures Hit Rich and Famous

by Craig Karmin and James R. Hagerty
Friday, April 9, 2010

The rich and famous now have something in common with hundreds of thousands of middle and lower-class Americans: The bank is about to take their homes. Houses with loans of $5 million or more will likely see a sharp rise in foreclosures this year, according to a RealtyTrac study for The Wall Street Journal.

Just this week, a Tudor mansion in Bel-Air belonging to film star Nicolas Cage was in foreclosure auction and reverted to the lender. On Wednesday, Richard Fuscone, a former top Wall Street executive, declared personal bankruptcy, forestalling a foreclosure auction that had been scheduled this week on his 14-acre Westchester mansion. Last month a Manhattan condominium owned by Italian film producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori was sold in a foreclosure auction for $33.2 million.

In February alone, 352 homes nationwide in this category were scheduled for foreclosure auction, the final step before a bank acquisition. That is the largest monthly number of these so-called notices of sale since the financial crisis began. By comparison, in all of 2009, there were 1,312 such notices. Economists say the super-wealthy are among the last to lose their homes in a mortgage crisis because they usually have high savings, better access to credit and other means for staving off foreclosure. But many of them work in financial services and other industries hit especially hard by the crisis, and have seen their wealth shrink in the market crash.

While the numbers are modest compared with foreclosures at other income levels, they suggest the possibility of a sudden spike in bank takeovers of the wealthiest Americans' property. Typically half the notices of sale result in homes being turned over to creditors, though the figure could be slightly lower for the richest Americans who have more financial options, according to Daren Blomquist at RealtyTrac.

Big borrowers are more likely to default than ordinary people, according to data from First American CoreLogic. Its loan database, reflecting more than 80% of the overall home-loan market, includes 1,700 loans with balances of $4 million or more. About 14.8% of those loans were 90 days or more overdue at the end of January, compared with 8.7% for all home loans tracked by First American. Sam Khater, a senior economist at First American, said the bigger borrowers may be more prone to stop making payments when they have lost all their home equity.

Mr. Fuscone, Merrill Lynch's one-time head of Latin America, put his mansion up for sale in November, asking $13.9 million. But he couldn't find a buyer.

The court had scheduled a foreclosure auction for Thursday for the 18,471-square-foot mansion -- with two swimming pools, two elevators, six fireplaces, 11 bathrooms and a seven-car garage. The personal bankruptcy filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Wednesday temporarily freezes the foreclosure process.

Reached by phone, Mr. Fuscone declined to comment. Brokers and real estate tracking companies say that his home is one of the most expensive properties to face foreclosure proceedings yet.

The phenomenon is not limited to the New York area. Banks have taken over homes with loans of $5 million or more in Georgia, North Carolina and Colorado, RealtyTrac says.

Mr. Cage had tried to sell his 11,817-square-foot Bel-Air property for $35 million but failed to get any offers, said James Chalke, a real-estate agent who had the listing. At a foreclosure sale Wednesday, the property attracted no bids from investors and so was acquired by the foreclosing lender. Annett Wolf, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cage, said he had no comment.

A representative of Mr. Cecchi Gori, producer of more than 200 films including "Il Postino" and "Life is Beautiful," said his financial situation is improving.

In Florida's Miami-Dade County, the three largest foreclosure filings initiated against homes in the past six months involved a 4,655-square-foot home in Sunset Islands; a 8,443-square-foot house in Coral Gables; and a condo in Miami Beach, according to Peter Zalewski, a principal of Condo Vultures. All three had mortgages of $3.5 million to $4 million.

Mortgage defaults began to surge in late 2006, mostly among borrowers with subprime mortgages, those for people with weak credit records or high ratios of debt to income.

Over the next few years defaults spread rapidly to better-heeled borrowers, especially those who got loans without documenting their income. At the end of 2009, nearly eight million households, or 15% of those with mortgages, were behind on mortgage payments or in the foreclosure process.

Wealthy people have the means to stretch out the distress process, sometimes for years.

"It's very, very difficult for these people to believe they've had such a severe reversal of fortune," says Maggie Navarro, a real-estate agent in Pasadena, Calif.

Marc Carpenter, a San Diego-based foreclosure specialist, adds that while it's much harder for potential buyers to get loans, there are also fewer buyers who can pay for top-dollar properties. "The upper end is definitely a lagging indicator," he says.

In his bankruptcy filing, Mr. Fuscone provided a list of his debts, including ones to the Greenwich Country Day School, American Express, Mercedes-Benz, a local hardware store, a pet store, and Richards of Greenwich, a fine-clothing store.

"My background is in the financial-services industry and I have been personally devastated by the financial crisis which came to a head in March 2008," Mr. Fuscone said in his bankruptcy declaration. "I have been sued by Patriot National Bank" as part of a foreclosure action. "I currently have no income for the 30-day period" following his bankruptcy petition.

C.W. Kelsey, owner of Greenwich Hardware, was among the local merchants owed money by Mr. Fuscone, though he wouldn't say how much.

"Traditionally, the majority of our credit problems were contractors," he said. "Now there are people you'd never expect two or three years ago to have problems, who live in multimillion dollar homes."

-- Nick Timiraos and Josh Barbanel contributed to this article.

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HUD Redefines "Foreclosed" to Include 60-Day Delinquencies

By: Carrie Bay 04/02/2010

HUD’s got a big red editing pen in hand and is going to work on what we’ve all understood to be the traditional meaning of foreclosure. The federal agency announced Friday that it is changing how it defines foreclosed to include properties in default and abandoned to include homes with lingering code violations.

Effective immediately, HUD is classifying any property that is at least 60 days behind on the mortgage or the property owner is 90 days or more delinquent on tax payments as a “foreclosed” home.

In addition, HUD is expanding the definition of an “abandoned” property to include homes where no mortgage or tax payments have been made by the property owner for at least 90 days or a code enforcement inspection has determined that the property is not habitable and the owner has taken no corrective actions within 90 days of notification of the deficiencies.

HUD officials say the new wordsmith-ing will help communities acquire, rehabilitate, and re-sell foreclosed and abandoned properties more quickly under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) and help prevent further decline in hard-hit neighborhoods.

The changes come just as reports are surfacing that states and local municipalities have spent less than half of the $4 billion available through the NSP initiative to buy up distressed properties in their communities.

According to the Associated Press, as of March 16, only 38 percent of the grant money had been “obligated,” meaning a municipality has a formal contract at a specific address

in place to purchase a foreclosed or abandoned home. The state and local governments must commit the money to projects by September or the funding is lost, the news agency explained.

HUD says its new expanded definitions will increase the reach of NSP by allowing more properties to qualify and will remove existing barriers caused by market conditions.

“The original NSP rules…limited the impact of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and we’ve heard that clearly from our partners on the ground,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “The rules needed to be more flexible so our local partners can put taxpayer dollars to work quickly to stabilize neighborhoods hard-hit by foreclosure.”

HUD previously defined the term foreclosed to apply only to properties where the foreclosure process was completed. Local communities suggested this narrow definition was not a good fit for market conditions since many properties were lingering in the foreclosure process and beyond the reach of NSP.

Properties will now be eligible for NSP assistance if: the mortgage on the property is 60 or more days delinquent and the owner has been notified; the property owner is 90 days or more behind on the taxes; or foreclosure proceedings have been initiated or completed under state or local law.

The word abandoned was previously defined as a property that had been foreclosed upon and was vacant for at least 90 days. This definition effectively excluded properties abandoned by owners but where tenants were still in place, precluding local communities from assisting the properties with NSP funding or protecting the tenants’ occupancy. HUD determined this limitation was a substantial barrier to the preservation of existing affordable housing.

To address this limitation, HUD is now also classifying “abandoned” as a home where mortgage or tax payments are overdue by at least 90 days, or a home that has received a code violation that makes the property uninhabitable and no remedial action has been taken to bring it up to code for 90 days.

©2010 DS News. All Rights Reserved.

Short sales at new peak in January

REO transactions still higher at 27.2%

Short sales jumped to 15.9 percent of home purchase transactions last month, according to a monthly survey by Washington, D.C.-based business research firm Campbell Surveys and mortgage industry publication Inside Mortgage Finance.

That's the highest percentage of short sales since the survey first launched in July of last year, when short sales made up 12.5 percent of transactions. Before January, the peak had been 15.1 percent in October. That figure fell to 12.6 percent in November and rose to 13.7 percent in December.

Sales of damaged real estate owned (REO) properties and move-in ready REO properties made up 13.4 percent and 13.8 percent of January home purchase transactions, respectively.

In November, those numbers were 12.3 percent and 12.6 percent, respectively, and rose to 12.4 percent and 13.1 percent in December.

"Short-sales activity took a temporary dip in November around the expected expiration of the first-time homebuyer tax credit," said Thomas Popik, the survey's research director, in a release.

"Few first-time homebuyers wanted to take the chance that their short-sale transaction wouldn't be approved by the Nov. 30 deadline. But now that the tax credit has been extended, we see first-time homebuyers once again snapping up attractively priced short sales."

Because mortgage lenders often take several months to approve a short sale, such transactions are most attractive to first-time homebuyers who don't need to also sell a current home in a given time period, the release said.

The release also outlined possible reasons why short sales might be more palatable than REO transactions.

"Short sales typically result in lower lender losses and houses left in more saleable condition. Moreover, borrowers that agree to a short sale can often buy another house with mortgage financing after only two years. For borrowers going though the foreclosure process, mortgage financing can be unavailable for a period of five to seven years."

Short sales typically sell for only 91 percent of listing price, while move-in ready REOs sell for 99 percent of listing price, on average, the release said.

The monthly survey polls more than 1,500 real estate agents and brokers online nationwide from Campbell Surveys' database of 70,000 active agents in the first week of every month, according to company founder John Campbell.