Joe Waltuch, the new head of the Nevada Mortgage Lending Division, defended the subprime mortgage industry and downplayed the foreclosure crisis in his first interview.
Although he acknowledged a problem, he said, “You’re missing the positive side of all this.”
Subprime loans – high interest loans given to people with spotty credit histories – represent just 15 percent of the market, he said. Only 1.5 percent of all mortgages, he said, will end up in foreclosure: “Everybody seems to think we need to protect the 1,500 at the expense of the 98,500 good loans.”
“We put a lot of people in homes who wouldn’t otherwise be in homes,” he said.
The comments were counterintuitive, considering recent grim data: Foreclosures nationwide hit a record high in the second quarter, and Nevada is one of four states – along with Florida, California and Arizona – driving the national numbers, according to a survey released last week by the Mortgage Bankers Association
How ridiculous can you get. Read it all.
How ridiculous can you get? Unfortunately, Kendall, this is SOP procedure at all levels of government. It comes about from what we used to call bribery – today we call it “campaign financing”.
Our first home was financed at a ~11% 30 year mortgage. There was no such thing as a subprime in the early 1980’s or at it wasn’t called that.