The other core issue is that too many people can no longer afford their mortgage. Maybe they took out an adjustable-rate loan that has reset higher, or they lost a job in the slowing economy. If we could stop the cycle of defaults and foreclosures, the thinking goes, we could prevent deeply discounted, bank-sold homes from flooding the market, keep losses from further impairing mortgage-backed securities and preserve property values. That’s how we wind up with ideas like paying mortgage servicers to make loans more affordable and changing the bankruptcy code to allow judges to reduce the amount borrowers owe their mortgage company.
Are there people who bit off more than they could chew and will never be able to afford their homes? Yes. “We need to recognize the goal is not to keep everyone in their houses for as long as possible,” says Edward Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard University.
But there are also plenty of people who might be able to keep their homes with a lower interest rate or a longer loan period. In many cases, this is in the best economic interest of the mortgage holder, since up to half of a house’s value can be lost in foreclosure. And yet often–especially when the loan has been chopped up and dispersed to investors around the globe with a third-party servicer in charge of collecting payments–that’s not happening. “Servicers don’t have the right incentives,” says Christopher Mayer, professor of real estate at Columbia University’s Business School. Cutting them a check in return for a modification of the loan, or trumpeting their legal authority to do so, is meant to prime the mortgage-rewriting pump, as is letting bankruptcy judges revise mortgages.
The tricky part is figuring out who will meet their modified payments and who will simply fall behind again. The relapse rate can be quite high, meaning that we’d be spending money only to delay the inevitable. Part of what drives up the redefault rate, though, are changes that don’t lower, or may even increase, a borrower’s monthly payments. A lender that re-amortizes missed payments over the life of the loan might see doing so as a compromise–but that doesn’t mean the mortgage becomes more affordable. That’s why the FDIC insists that modifications reduce payments at least 10% and take up no more than 38% of a borrower’s gross income.
I guess the issue for me, if the government is involved, is whether there will be an issue of the Government taking private property without compensation, which is unconstitutional.