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Laura Rowley Money & Happiness

Laura Rowley, Money & Happiness

Footing the Bill for the Subprime Fiasco

by Laura Rowley

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Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2007, 12:00AM

Last week, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) proposed that the federal government spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help bail out subprime mortgage borrowers who are defaulting on their loans.

A report by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which Schumer chairs, estimates that the average cost of a foreclosure -- to the homeowner, lender, local government, and neighbors (whose homes decline in value) -- is $78,000. By contrast, preventing the foreclosure would cost $3,300 per home on average.

No Good Sense

"It makes good sense to make sure families and neighborhoods are protected from rogue lenders and lax government oversight," Schumer said in a speech last week, adding that he's working on the legislation. "It'll save homeowners from losing their equity, save cities and local governments from losing their tax revenues, and save neighborhoods from taking a big hit."

Good sense? If a bailout is good sense, Schumer should also sponsor a bill funding free cardiac bypass surgery and liposuction for anyone the government failed to protect from eating repeatedly at McDonald's. (Please, Chuck, let me know if this is in your plans and I'll immediately stop jogging and eating my veggies.)

Banking on a Tragedy

Unquestionably, bad things have happened in the mortgage market in the last five years. Lenders threw money at people with no income, no assets, and no down payments; people who "stated" their incomes, often falsely; people with terrible credit scores, who had a history of not paying their bills on time, or at all.

Some lenders lied about what would happen when interest rates rose and the loans adjusted. State regulators looked the other way.

Mortgage lenders pocketed their fees and commissions, told the overextended homeowner to have a nice day, and handed the loans over to Wall Street to be pooled and turned into mortgage-backed securities. They were sold to hedge funds, pension funds, and other investors greedy for the high yields.

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that one in five of the subprime loans issued between 2005 and 2006 will go into default. "The real tragedy here is that 2.2 million homeowners face the real possibility of losing their homes because they were misled, or just plain swindled by modern-day bandits," Schumer said in a hearing in March.

Shirking Responsibility

On the other hand, as far as I can tell, none of these modern-day bandits held a gun to anyone's head and forced them to take out a loan.

"There's a lot of discussion in Congress about how these are predatory loans, and widows and orphans are being thrown in the street," says Keith Gumbinger, vice president HSH Associates, a financial publisher. "But some of the issues we're dealing with today are self-inflicted wounds -- people who didn't bother to read applications or documents and signed for a loan."

Moreover, the vast majority of subprime borrowers -- more than 85 percent -- are paying their loans on time. Gumbinger estimates that subprime loans make up about 20 percent of the market. Within that segment, a little over 13 percent were delinquent in the fourth quarter of 2006, according to a Mortgage Bankers Association survey.

"Borrowers that five years ago didn't have an opportunity to buy have been given that opportunity -- and the fact is that with this great opportunity comes responsibility," says Gumbinger.

Foreclosure by the Numbers

The Joint Economic Committee is discussing several policy proposals that make sense: tightening educational and licensing requirements for mortgage brokers and lenders; creating a federal anti-predatory lending law that bans unfair and deceptive practices; enhancing disclosure practices for mortgage products so people have a better idea of what they're getting into; and establishing a "suitability' standard for mortgages, similar to the standards that must be met in the financial services industry, that will assess the borrower's ability to repay. (Some subprime lending was based on a borrower's ability to pay the loan at the low introductory rate, before it adjusted.)

Then there's the bailout piece. The JEC report proposes funding nonprofits who work with troubled borrowers, concluding that the high cost of foreclosures "presents a strong incentive to prevent them."

Schumer's committee says the average foreclosure costs nearly $80,000. Here's how the report breaks out that figure among various "stakeholders":

Homeowner$7,200
Lender$50,000
Local government$19,227
Impact on neighbor's home value$1,508
Estimated total cost of foreclosure:$77,935

Lenders Take Their Medicine

Some lenders were clearly predatory, and should be prosecuted for swindling consumers. But most were businesspeople looking to profit on vulnerable borrowers. We all know profit has a twin -- it's called risk. These financial institutions, and the investors who bought their bonds, knew what they were doing. Now let them pay for it.

Some of them are. Citigroup and Bank of America recently pledged $1 billion to a nonprofit housing group, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, to refinance borrowers who face foreclosure.

Other companies, such as Bear Stearns subsidiary EMC Mortgage, have created teams of specialists to work with troubled borrowers. EMC, which has a $78 billion subprime loan portfolio, has dubbed its 50-person workout group "the mod squad" (since they'll be modify the loan terms to avoid foreclosure).

Who Should Pay

Clearly, lenders, investors, and homeowners should step up to the plate here -- not taxpayers. In a hearing on the crisis in March, Schumer said families were "teased into unsuitable subprime loans."

"Teased into"? What kind of language is this? When did we transform from being a culture of opportunity to a culture of victimization? Taking out a mortgage is a choice, and choices have consequences. If we want to own our financial successes, we also have to own our financial mistakes.

And what kind of message does a government bailout send to Americans who did things the right way? People who had a job, paid their bills on time, built solid credit scores, saved for a down payment, read their loan terms, and scrutinized their budgets to make sure they could afford not only the mortgage payments, but the taxes, insurance and maintenance on their homes?

The Real Crisis

More important, what kind of precedent does a subprime bailout set? Undoubtedly, foreclosures will cause personal tragedy, as well as economic dislocations in the affected communities. But there's a much, much larger crisis brewing: Rising poverty among the soon-to-retire baby boomers who haven't saved for retirement.

When they can't work any longer, and don't have enough to live on, and cause a dislocation in the economy, will Congress bail them out too? Will Schumer be around to go after the "rogue" retailers and "bandits" who "teased" Americans into buying consumer goods when they should have been saving for retirement? Or will the government just put the burden on those of us who have done the right thing all along?

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75 Comments

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  • Yahoo! Finance User - Tuesday, May 1, 2007, 1:40PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    This is what people should do to avoid foreclosure in the first place: Here is a great way to pay off your mortgage in 1/3rd to 1/2 the time. It's from United First Financial www.u1stfinancial.net/power. Without having to refinance or start a bi-weekly payment plan you can save tens of thousands of dollars in interset and payments on this program. Best of all it wont increase your monthly expenses one bit! I have 28 years left to pay on my mortgage but with this program I'll be paid off in 9.7 years without changing my lifestyle or having to give things up. It's a fantastic program and I recommend you contact them right away. Go to the website and scroll to the bottom and click on the "watch mma video tour" button, a video will begin that shows you the exact details of the program...good luck

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Tuesday, May 1, 2007, 1:10PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 3/5

    As usual the "expert" missed the obvious. The notion that the "taxpayer" is bailing out the "irresponsible homeowners" will set some sort of precedent is absurd. That precedent was set long ago when the Supreme Court decided to grant "personhood" to corporations. That combined with the political whores in Washington who will belly up for anybody with 2 bucks has produced a 18,000 page tax code. What do you think are on all those pages? Tax breaks - sometimes targeted to an individual level. Now who is subsidizing who?

  • Yesugi - Sunday, April 29, 2007, 7:05PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Schumer wants to give MY money to people who bought too much house, and at the same time uphold the inflated, unrealistic market? That's so the "homeowners" will vote for him, and so his friends, the over-extended bankers, won't have to take the bath thy engineered. He says he is on the side of the buyer, yet the money taken from all of us will go to the bankers, who he says were sneaky, and thuse should be punished. That's right, Chuck -- throw money at them. They'll learn!

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Sunday, April 29, 2007, 12:14PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Great job telling it like it is. People need to be more responsible and stop looking for our govt to bail them out. We need to join together to prevent the housing market prices from inflating beyond our ability to pay for them. I say let the market CRASH, only then will my wife and i be able to afford a home. And we make well over mid-class income.

  • Su - Sunday, April 29, 2007, 10:54AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Very good article. Should we have bailed out everyone who lost money in the stock market crash? Punished the predatory brokers forcing those poor unwilling day traders to take out margin? Really this is minimally different. Just because someone lives in a house doesn't mean signing a mortgage they can't afford wasn't just as reckless as gambling at a casino. People only cry when their losing, had the prices doubled they'd be thanking those predatory lenders. By the way why did yahoo remove most of the old message boards? Seems like the stock won't go up til they bring them back.

  • Experienced - Friday, April 27, 2007, 5:44PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Thank You So Much, Laura Rowley!! Those of us who have worked hard, saved when it hurt to save and couldn't buy a home until it was the responsible thing to do Don't want Our TAX Dollars to be used to bail out irresponsible home buyers, mortgage lenders and investors.

  • Chris - Thursday, April 26, 2007, 8:33PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    The absolute best and most relevant article I've ever read on Yahoo Finance. Thank you so much for writing this. I am one of the ones who has sat on the sidelines, working hard, saving for a sizable down payment, and maintaining excellent credit. Despite have a master's degree and what used to be considered a good income, I can't afford a house where I live. Too much cheap and easy credit, and I can't compete because I have seen the risk that's present in the market. It infuriates me that politicians want to spend my hard earned money to bailout morons who acted irresponsibly and drove home prices to unreasonable levels.

  • Nemo - Thursday, April 26, 2007, 6:18PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    I remember the S&L bailout when we taxpayers picked up the tab so rich folks wouldn't lose money above the $100k FDIC insurance guarantee. Back then $100k bought probably twice what it would today -- nobody would've starved or been homeless. I'm so sick of welfare for the rich ... If fraudulent practices on the part of lenders can be proved through due process of law, why not liquidate the criminal's assets and use those to repay those few borrowers who have been genuinely victimized ... and let the rest take their lumps as we all must when we do foolish things.

  • Artimus Fact - Tuesday, April 24, 2007, 8:52PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Hello? Bailouts are for extreme, unpredictable acts of God, not the greedy actions of a multitude of people throughout the chain who planned poorly.

  • Benjamin - Tuesday, April 24, 2007, 3:05PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Excellent and very true article! Charles Schumer is a big stooge if he thinks a taxpayer funded government bailout is the solution.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Tuesday, April 24, 2007, 10:49AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am so disappointed in Hillary and the other pols trying to bail out the irresponsible borrowers. I am a long term Democrat but I will NEVER vote for a candidate who says we should reward irresponsibility. I want MY check for what I lost in the stock market in 2000!!!!

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Monday, April 23, 2007, 4:54PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Excellent article. our representatives need to read it. Thanks Laura.

  • Andy - Monday, April 23, 2007, 3:59PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    I will admit that there were probably people who were taken advantage of; however, how many of them failed to read and/or even understand what they are signing? "The most important financial decision" and they just sign on the line...basic math skills would show that if you are paying $1600 a month for a $500k house, the party won't last forever. Yes - our culture does look down on renters. That needs to change. People want to own their own houses to have the "American Dream". But falsifying their income and accepting teaser rates shouldn't entitle someone to get to get a bailout and stay in their house. All that will do is prolong the agony of the housing correction. Housing will decline - get used to it. Let's get the gov't out of this and let the cycle correct naturally. Government intervention will only make things worse - think what happened in Japan for the last 15 years. Think about how we got into this mess in the first place - our government holding the rates way below what they should have been for way too long. Bailouts basically will make the responsible taxpayers have to pay for the irresponsible speculators and spendthrifts. Any bailout measure will end up being financed by the people.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Monday, April 23, 2007, 3:54PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Great article. We neeed to send a petition to our representatives to stop this ridiculous "bailout." We've become a nation of irresponsible people looking to be "bailed out" everywhere.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Monday, April 23, 2007, 3:43PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    What's wrong with house prices falling? A young friend of mine is looking for a house after she had a child and despite both she and her husband having good jobs, she is finding that a decent home in a middle class neighborhood will eat their future income, severely cutting into their ability to save for their retirement or for child’s college. All this due to the big run ups in home prices owing to the "new lending breakthroughs". Let the fools who lent and borrowed the money like there is no tomorrow, pay for their folly. I find the notion that my friend should pay twice, once for the inflated price and again to bail out the fools, outrageous. Let them learn the hard way, future first time home buyers, lenders and borrowers will be better off for it.

  • investor - Monday, April 23, 2007, 7:51AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    wow. talk about an excellent article. this hits the issue DEAD ON! I too in the past had credit issues, but I PAID MY BILLS, and waited for my credit rating to increase and SAVED FOR A DOWN PAYMENT! There's no free lunch here, as there shouldn't be. The problem lies in the lawmakers of this country i.e. Schumer and congress.. too much of an entitlement mentality that they share. If you want a house-- then work for it. I did. It was hard, but I realized sacrifices, i.e. no plasma tv's no bling bling suv for a few years was worth it. Another great point she made was the upcoming baby-boomers who have little saved for retirement. I don't want to be paying for their mistakes as well. As I've said, there's too much of an entitlement mentality in this country, everyone expecting a handout when things go bad. It's like the fat person wondering why he/she can't lose weight, spending tons on different diets, while all the while consuming Big Macs and fries, and never excercising... Common sense isn't always common.

  • Tim C - Sunday, April 22, 2007, 11:44PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    You are absolutely correct!! How many of these "bailout victims" drive nice new cars,have kids in college etc? What and who determines the assets of those who could get this bailout? I see it every day in people just trying to keep up with the "Joneses" with no thought of the ramifications of job loss,illness and every other misforfune that can come into a consumers way. It's called something for nothing and I will guarantee you that this Schumer fiasco of a bill will FAIL!!!

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Sunday, April 22, 2007, 11:16PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    And what about those subprimes who bought into a condominium. The other owners are now footing the monthly assessments these losers can't pay--they just walked away and left their neighbors, who are also taxpayers, to pay. Now, the Dems want those same condo owners to pay the mortgage lenders & government too? How many times do we pay for the mistakes of lenders, who used to be gatekeepers, for chasing the buck instead of responsibly saying "no" to those who don't have a track record. Back in the day, a lender made sure you didn't borrow ANY part of your 20% downpayment from a friend or relative. That's when America worked! Now, this subprime mess just shows, again, how pathetically low this country, and the people in it, have sunk

  • jay - Sunday, April 22, 2007, 10:36PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    I,v been waiting many years to buy house for my family, since I could not afford to purchase home in L.A. Why do I responsible for others' liabilities? Mr. Schumer might have many houses.

  • David - Sunday, April 22, 2007, 9:39PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    If only Schumer could read this piece. Very nicely stated and I agree with everything stated! Americans need to take responsibility with their lives.

  • John - Sunday, April 22, 2007, 11:14AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Makes you wonder why any of us should accept any personal responsiblity for anything. Bottomline - both homeowners and investors knew what they were doing and it is up to them to bear the responsiblity. Also, one thing that was not mentioned, that during the whole low rate ajustable mortgages a few years ago, it was none other than the former fed chairman Alan Greenspan that said that these loans were fine and put his peronal seal of approval. I guess Senator Schumer forgot this. Lastly, we as a country are spending more money than we have with the wars and other spending, can we as a country afford another expense ?

  • W - Sunday, April 22, 2007, 9:23AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Buried within this article is statement on a prevailing attitude in this country, that we don't have to be responsible for our actions and the government (usually led by Democrats) will protect us. We don't need "protection". We need to stop juries from finding for plaintiffs who are too stupid to check the temperature of their coffee first, stop putting up railings which spoil the view because the low end of the gene pool deliberately ventured too close to the edge, stop proposing laws such as the one to require tie-downs on large appliances because a family left a toddler unattended with a gate open and a heavy TV on a flimsy table. Yes that child died but it wasn't the table or TV manufacture's fault. We need to stop blaming inanimate objects for the actions of people. Morality or common sense cannot be legislated. We do not need knee-jerk reactions and laws based on the actions of a small percentage of people. What WE need is to accept responsibility for our actions. What the GOVERNMENT needs to do is apply our money and their efforts to managing thie country, NOT individual lives.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Saturday, April 21, 2007, 8:14PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    If Schumer feels so strongly, let him personally bail out these folks or house them in his own home. Let market makers work out a solution. There are a lot of stakeholder with an interest in resolving things creatively - - without using tax dollars.

  • Marjorie H - Saturday, April 21, 2007, 3:03PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 3/5

    Laura: This is the S&L Crisis dressed up in new clothes. The mortgage fraudsters who pilfered from the innocent borrowers are now gettting caught again and are asking the taxpayer to bail them out AGAIN, eventhough these loans are guaranteed -sometimes multiple times. The mortgage industry does not lose money at all. They just want everyone to believe they do. For instance, if a mortgage company lost $50,000 per foreclosure, why would they foreclose on homes worth $20K-$40K? Insurance, reinsurance, and reinsurance is why. Plus, they get the house back and keep all the payments that were made. This is a shell-game, or a game of musical chairs. When caught, it is the entity holding the fraudulent loans who go belly-up, not those responsible for creating the fraud. After the loans have been copied on a copier and securitzed, a single loan can have many entities involved, each profiting from nothing more than a copied document. Some loans are found in multiple loan pools. Same loan copied muliple times. EMC's "Mod Squad" is a PR stint. EMC is known as one of the worst fraudster/foreclosure mills in the industry who are stealing homes with complete impunity. In one documented case in Dallas, Texas, EMC spent 8 years and over a Million Dollars to steal a $140K home they admitted at trail they didn't even own. They also testified the homeowner was never in default. Facing a guilty verdict, EMC was able to get the judge to help them steal the home. And it worked. Try to figure that one out. The press refuses to report on this bizarre story and the court will not allow access to the trial transcript (a public document), unless you pay $1,000.00 per page, versus the customary $1.00 per page. EMC Mortgage is also under FTC investigation for their illegal practices. You must know the tricks of mortgage fraud before one can blame the consumer. One of the key elements of mortgage fraud, is lying to convince people to do something they would not do if they were told the truth. It's that simple. You cannot blame the homeowner's lack of knowledge, when mortgage companies are also defrauded by individuals, but these are the cases that make the news. If a banker can get scammed with their wealth of industry knowledge, then the average consumer is easy pickings. The main difference here is, if an individual gets caught committing mortgage fraud against a bank, they are looking at a possible lifetime in prison. If a mortgage company gets caught committing mortgage fraud against hundreds of thousands of homeowners, they get a tiny fine, then set free to continue stealing. (Remember Fairbanks Capital?) There were estimates Fairbanks stole more than one billion dollars from innocent homeowners. When caught, they were fined $55 Million. The borrowers who lost homes, families, lives, life savings, health, etc. were given less than 9 cents on the dollar. Why were they not paid 100% of what was taken, plus damages? This is akin to getting caught stealing a million dollars from a bank and then asked to pay $1,000. back and told to "try" not to do it again or it will cost them another $1,000. The fraud is so bad, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees are now investigating: "Theft of Homes by Lawyers and Due Process Violations by the Courts" The public has a right to know the real truth; the mortgage fraud behind hundreds of thousands of these current foreclosures, and the corrupt corporations and lawyers behind it who have the power to manipulate the courts and regulators with the stolen money used to guarantee impunity. The innocent homeowners are being blamed for the fraud that was willfully and knowingly created by the industry itself. Now they are getting caught, and once again, asking the taxpayers to bail them out, so they can keep their ill-gotten gains. Msfraud.org will help you understand this callous Ponzi scheme.of stealing homes from innocent people. Interview them.

  • GangJ - Saturday, April 21, 2007, 2:54PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Right on target!!! The bottom line of this issue is that you make your own choice and enjoy or suffer your own consequences. If you choose to be stupid or irresponsible, be it. However, it is not fair for you to enjoy all the benefits first and later ask someone else unrelated to your decision to help you out when you run into problems.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Saturday, April 21, 2007, 12:23PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Great article. The Dems just don't get it.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Saturday, April 21, 2007, 12:12PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Laura, you have it all wrong! We need much more legilation to protect people from themselves. How is making borrowers and investors accountable going to help protect this feable nation? We need 18 more forms for mortgage disclosures, that will help for sure. We also need to keep printing more cash, don't worry about the sinking value of the buck. And if everyone goes bankrupt, who really cares, because we'll print more money anyways. We also need to KEEP lowering educational standards so everyone can graduate. And if we all had the retirement plan that our Congress men and women have, we would be all set!!! Just think, we would not have to pay social security taxes because we would be recieving a lucrative pension plan that increases every year! Without having to pay into no less. That's what we need Laura, WillyT

  • boedade - Saturday, April 21, 2007, 11:19AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Thank you for such an excellent article. It points out both sides of the argument; then shows the real issues at hand. I am a collector with a sub prime lender and an accounting and finance major in college. I am struggling to put two and two together to find who is to really blame for all the turmoil in the industry. Thanks for shedding the light!

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Saturday, April 21, 2007, 11:16AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 4/5

    Good luck Mr Schumer. You have a tough sell ahead of you. The vast majority of borrowers (even subprime) are not delinquent, so you need to convince them that they need to spend money to save the tiny minority who did the wrong thing.

  • RB - Saturday, April 21, 2007, 10:45AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Laure Rowley clearly has a sound grasp on macroeconomics, and the current mortgage crisis. Keep such great, informative articels coming!

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