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Bernanke Urges Banks to Forgive Portion of Mortgage Debt

Bernanke Urges Banks to Forgive Portion of Mortgage Debt

Assessment: The Fed's remarks predicts further distress in residential real estate and mortgage markets. The Fed's recommendations will negatively impact mortgage backed securities and derivatives markets. Expect credit markets to be tighten and become increasingly illiquid. Long term interest rates will have higher risk premiums. Long term borrowing costs will increase even as the Fed reduces the Fed Funds and/or Discount Rate.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, battling the worst housing recession in a quarter century, urged lenders to forgive portions of mortgages held by homeowners at risk of defaulting.

``Efforts by both government and private-sector entities to reduce unnecessary foreclosures are helping, but more can, and should, be done,'' Bernanke said in a speech in Orlando, Florida today. ``Principal reductions that restore some equity for the homeowner may be a relatively more effective means of avoiding delinquency and foreclosure.''

Bernanke's call goes beyond the stance of the Bush administration and previous Fed comments. By comparison, the central bank's Feb. 27 report to Congress called for lenders to ``pursue prudent loan workouts'' through means such as modifying mortgage terms and deferring payments.

The Fed chief highlighted the threat posed by home values falling below mortgage balances, something Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson played down yesterday. Bernanke said the ``recent surge'' in delinquencies has been ``closely linked'' to the slide of home equity.

Paulson said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday that ``almost too much'' has been made out of concerns about homeowners whose house prices have dropped below their mortgages. He also said the administration's strategy of encouraging lenders to modify loans is ``the right approach and we are making substantial progress.''

Democrats' Push Democrats in Congress, by contrast, have said relying on lenders to alter loan terms hasn't yielded enough progress and are pushing for a stronger government response. Bernanke warned today that the housing crisis may deepen.

``Delinquencies and foreclosures likely will continue to rise for a while longer,'' Bernanke said in the comments to the Independent Community Bankers of America. A surfeit of homes for sale indicates ``further declines in house prices are likely,'' he said.

Subprime borrowers are about to see their mortgage rates increase more than 1 percentage point, he said. ``Declines in short-term interest rates and initiatives involving rate freezes will reduce the impact somewhat, but interest-rate resets will nevertheless impose stress on many households.''

In the past, homeowners could refinance, though that option is now ``largely'' gone because sales of bonds backed by subprime mortgages ``have virtually halted,'' Bernanke said. ``This situation calls for a vigorous response.''

Interest Rates Bernanke didn't comment in his speech text on the outlook for the economy or interest rates. Traders expect the Federal Open Market Committee to lower the benchmark rate by 0.75 percentage point by or at the panel's next meeting on March 18, based on futures prices.

``Lenders tell us that they are reluctant to write down principal,'' Bernanke said. ``They say that if they were to write down the principal and house prices were to fall further, they could feel pressured to write down principal again.''

The Fed chairman countered that by reducing the amount of the loan, this ``may increase the expected payoff by reducing the risk of default and foreclosure.''

Bernanke also urged investors in mortgage bonds to accept ``short payoffs'' of loans by allowing borrowers to refinance at a lower principal.

OTS Plan
For investors, a reduction in principal that's ``sufficient to make borrowers eligible for a new loan would remove the downside risk'' of further writedowns or defaults, Bernanke said. Investors may be able to share in future gains in home prices under some plans, he said, citing a proposal by the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Paulson, by contrast, has declined to endorse the OTS plan. John Reich, director of the OTS, last month proposed a program where borrowers would refinance mortgages at current home values. The lender would receive a ``negative equity'' certificate that could be redeemed if the house is sold.

The number of U.S. homeowners entering foreclosure rose 75 percent in 2007, with more than 1 percent in some stage of foreclosure during the year, according to RealtyTrac Inc. of Irvine, California. For the year, more than 2.2 million default notices, auction notices and bank repossessions were reported on about 1.3 million properties.

Yesterday, the Fed and other regulators sent letters to institutions they supervise, encouraging the banks to report on their efforts to modify mortgages at risk of default.

``This will make it easier for regulators, the mortgage industry, lawmakers and homeowners to assess the effectiveness of these efforts,'' Fed Governor Randall Kroszner said in a statement yesterday.

Bernanke spoke in a state that's among the worst affected by the housing collapse. Miami home prices have dropped 17.5 percent in the past year, the most of 20 large U.S. cities, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index. Foreclosures in Florida jumped at more than double the nationwide pace, rising 158 percent in the past year, according to RealtyTrac.
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Labels: credit derivatives, FED, federal reserve, mortgage backed securities, mortgage derivatives, real estate

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 12:10 PM 0 comments

Fannie, Freddie Agree to New Appraisal Standards

Labels: appraisal, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, mortgage backed securities, real estate

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 7:47 AM 0 comments

Universities scoop up risky subprime debt from Bear Stearns Hedge Fund

Universities scoop up risky subprime debt

University endowments were among the most eager buyers of risky mortgage-backed securities being offloaded by Wall Street this week. "There's an opportunity out there to buy these loans at a discount," said Lou Morrell, vice president for investments and treasurer at Wake Forest University. Meanwhile, Bear Stearns continued to scramble to save two hedge funds hit hard by the subprime fallout, saying Thursday it took on $3.2 billion in loans to stop creditors from seizing assets of one of its money-losing hedge funds.

Bear Stearns Plans $3.2 Billion Hedge Fund Bailout (Update2)
By Jody Shenn and Yalman Onaran
June 22 (Bloomberg) --

Bear Stearns Cos. is proposing a $3.2 billion bailout of a money-losing hedge fund, the biggest rescue since 1998, to forestall creditors from seizing assets, people with knowledge of the proposal said.

The firm told lenders to the High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund yesterday that it would assume their loans, said the people, who declined to be named because the plan is confidential. The New York-based firm made the offer after creditors including Merrill Lynch & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. put some of their collateral up for sale to investors.

Bear Stearns increased efforts to salvage the fund, one of two that made bad bets on collateralized-debt obligations, as concern about a possible collapse sent stocks and bonds of financial companies lower. An agreement with creditors would prevent a fire sale of the collateral, while increasing the risk to Bear Stearns, the second-biggest underwriter of mortgage bonds.

``Bear needs to put this behind it as soon as possible,'' said Peter Goldman, who helps manage $600 million at Chicago Asset Management, including shares of Bear Stearns. ``The firm might take on some of the risk of the fund they didn't have before, but they're a bond shop and they wouldn't take on risk they shouldn't.''

The Bear Stearns fund lost about 10 percent of its value this year, while the related fund, the 10-month old High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, lost about 20 percent, according to people familiar with the matter. Both funds are run by Ralph Cioffi, 51, a senior managing director.

Fastest-Growing
The funds speculated in highly-rated CDOs -- securities backed by bonds, loans, derivatives and other CDOs -- that were hurt in March and April as defaults on subprime mortgages to people with poor or limited credit histories increased. The fund also lost on opposite bets against home-loan bonds, which backed many of its CDOs.

Bear Stearns spokeswoman Elizabeth Ventura declined to comment. Lehman spokesman Randy Whitestone also declined to comment. Adam Castellani, a spokesman for JPMorgan couldn't immediately be reached when called after hours.

Investors from hedge funds to pension funds and foreign banks have snapped up CDOs as a new way to invest in debt, making it the fastest-growing market and pushing the amount outstanding to more than $1 trillion.

CDOs trade infrequently and holders rarely have comparable sales to use when valuing the securities on their books. Forced sales may have required investors to write down those values, potentially causing billions of dollars of losses.

Largest Since LTCM
``The problem is not what we see happening, but what we don't see,'' said Joseph Mason, associate professor of finance at Drexel University in Philadelphia and co-author of an 84-page study this year on the CDO market. ``We don't know the price of these assets. We don't know which banks are exposed to this sector. These conditions are the classic conditions for financial crises across history.''

The bailout of the fund would be the largest since Long-Term Capital Management LP, which received $3.5 billion from 14 lenders in 1998. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based fund, run by John Meriwether, lost $4.6 billion.

In the case of Long-Term Capital, lenders agreed to take equity stakes in the fund after New York Federal Reserve President William McDonough called the heads of the firms together. They then sold assets over time to limit the impact of its collapse.

Bear Stearns's proposal doesn't involve taking equity. Instead, the firm would become a lender to the fund, its loan secured by the assets of the fund.

Bundling Securities
Bankers and money managers bundle securities into a CDO, dividing it into pieces with credit ratings as high as AAA. The riskiest parts have no rating because they are first in line for any losses. Investors in this so-called equity portion expect to generate returns of more than 10 percent.

The first CDOs were created at now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. in 1987. Sales reached $503 billion in 2006, a fivefold increase in three years. More than half of those issued last year contained mortgages made to people with poor credit, little loan history, or high debt, according to Moody's Investors Service.

CDOs may have lost as much as $25 billion because of subprime defaults, Lehman Brothers analysts estimated in April.

Bear Stearns shares rose for the first time in four days yesterday after Merrill decided against selling all its collateral. The stock dropped $1.35, or 0.9 percent, to $144.46 at 10:58 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Risk Perceptions
The perceived risk of owning corporate bonds was little changed today after reaching the highest since September earlier this week. Contracts based on $10 million of debt in the CDX North America Crossover Index was quoted at about $169,000, after rising as high as $179,000 yesterday, according to Deutsche Bank AG.

The Bear Stearns funds had borrowed $9 billion and made bets of more than $11 billion, one of the people familiar with the situation said. The creditors include Merrill, Lehman, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and Cantor Fitzgerald LP, all in New York. Bank of America Corp., based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Barclays Plc in London and Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG were the other lenders.

As the funds faltered, Merrill sought to protect itself by seizing the assets that were used as collateral for its loans. The firm was followed by JPMorgan, which offered some securities for sale before withdrawing its plan. Lehman put some securities up for sale, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The second fund had less money from investors though was more leveraged, meaning it had borrowed more relative to its assets. Talks with creditors to that fund are also underway, one person said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jody Shenn in New York at jshenn@bloomberg.net ; Yalman Onaran in New York at yonaran@bloomberg.net .

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hedge fund, bailout, high grade, CDO, collateralized debt obligations, university endowment, investment managers, mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps

Labels: bailout, CDO, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, hedge fund, high grade, investment managers, mortgage backed securities, university endowment

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 5:50 PM 0 comments

Hedge fund future bleak with Merrill sell-off

Hedge fund future bleak with Merrill sell-off

Merrill Lynch's planned auction of about $800 million of bonds held by a money-losing Bear Stearns hedge fund could signal the end of a Bear Stearns effort to save the fund. The 10-month-old fun run by Bear Stearns senior managing director Ralph Cioffi has lost 20% this year and is under increasing pressure from creditors, including Merrill. Bear Stearns has attributed the falloff of the fund and a sister fund to the slump in the U.S. housing market.

Some Lenders Dislike Plan to Save Bear Stearns Fund
By JULIE CRESWELL and VIKAS BAJAJ

An effort to save a troubled hedge fund at Bear Stearns hit a major hurdle yesterday when Merrill Lynch signaled that it would move forward with plans to auction $850 million in subprime securities that had been held as collateral.

While negotiations are continuing and the auction could be averted, the move signaled that some lenders in the High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage fund are not happy with some terms of the Bear Stearns bailout plan.

Executives at the bank have been scrambling to shore up the fund since three lenders — Merrill, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase — asked the bank to put up more capital. The executives had offered to inject $1.5 billion in new loans into the fund, and a consortium of other banks, including Citigroup and Barclays, would infuse $500 million in new capital.

In return, the Wall Street banks and brokerage firms that had provided nearly $6 billion to the hedge fund would have had their own exposure reduced but would have had to agree not to demand more cash or collateral from the fund for a year, according to people briefed on the plan who were not authorized to speak for attribution.

If Merrill moves forward with an auction, it could make it much more difficult for Bear Stearns and the longtime portfolio manager of the fund, Ralph Cioffi, who has spent the last few days scrambling to try to bring in new money, to save the 10-month-old fund. If other lenders decide to follow Merrill’s lead and seize and sell assets, it could lead to the dissolution of the hedge fund.
Late yesterday, some people briefed on the plan said that one option might be for Bear Stearns to buy out Merrill’s stake. Representatives at Bear Stearns and Merrill declined to comment.
But if the assets — securities and bonds backed by subprime mortgages that can be difficult to value — are sold at prices well below where they are currently valued, the reverberations across Wall Street would be strong. Not only would Merrill be forced to post losses on its holdings, but other banks, hedge funds and investors owning similar securities would have to mark down the value of those holdings to new, lower prices.

“If we end up seeing these assets sold at significantly distressed prices, it will likely cause other funds to have to re-evaluate how effective and fair the values that they have been carrying these securities have been.” said Josh Rosner, a managing director at Graham Fisher, an investment research firm in New York.

The potential for a large ripple effect across the financial markets has been one reason many of the other lenders, even those unhappy with the terms of the bailout plan, stayed at the negotiating table with Bear Stearns, according to people briefed on the talks.

Started just last year, the Bear Stearns hedge fund was hit by a combination of bad bets on bonds backed by subprime mortgages as well as high levels of leverage. Investors originally put $600 million into the fund and another $6 billion was borrowed from the Wall Street banks.

Through the end of April, the fund had lost about 23 percent, prompting investors to try to redeem their investments. In May, the fund froze redemptions and soon faced margin calls from its banks.

While Bear Stearns has little exposure to the fate of the fund — the company and individual executives invested just $40 million in it — its stock nonetheless declined 2.2 percent, to $146.79. in the last two days.

Investors are probably concerned about how the outcome could affect the larger Bear Stearns business of underwriting and trading bonds backed by mortgages.

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hedge funds, mortgage backed securities, CDO, CDS, credit derivatives, mortgage derivatives

Labels: CDO, CDS, credit derivatives, hedge funds, mortgage backed securities, mortgage derivatives

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 6:31 PM 0 comments

Speed of subprime bust surprises lenders

Mortgage market unstable?

Surprise was the key word Monday at the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Secondary Market Conference & Expo in New York, as many were shocked at the quick collapse of the subprime-mortgage market. The quick market sell-off has led to the demise of many lenders in the industry, and many loans are no longer even possible for clients.

Speed of subprime bust surprises lenders
Many mortgage lenders expected a subprime meltdown, but not one that came so fast and strong.
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writerMay 23 2007: 8:18 AM EDT

The subprime mortgage meltdown has been a shock to industry insiders, but now they say it's hitting harder and faster than expected - even to those who predicted the crisis in the first place.
That was the message Monday from a panel of leading industry executives on the state of the mortgage lending industry at the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Secondary Market Conference & Expo in New York.

Michael Marriott, a panelist and managing director for Credit Suisse, said, "Last October, I predicted the subprime market would collapse and many issuers would go out of business. But the violence and speed of the market sell-off surprised people."

David Lowman, a panelist and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s global mortgage business, said, "35 percent of what once could be done, can no longer be done," referring to mortgage loan products that have effectively been taken off the shelves.

And speaking separately from his Atlanta office, Duane LeGate, president of House Buyer Network, a specialist in short sales and foreclosure prevention, said one of the real estate agents he works with had six deals blow up within four days because, "The loan originator told him, 'We're not offering [these products] anymore.'"

According to LeGate, this kind of thing just started to happen in the past month or so.
Allen Hardester, director of business development for mortgage broker Guaranteed Rate, said many once-common subprime loans products are now almost impossible to find.

Mortgage lenders get creative "Anything that smacks of no-income and no-documentation is history," he said. "Anything above 85 percent to 90 percent loan-to-value, anything non-owner occupied, anything ludicrous as to value - like someone stepping up from a $1,000 a month payment to a $6,000 a month - is history."

Lenders are also scrutinizing applications much more carefully, and many don't like what they find. Lowman said he had recently looked at a low-documention application for a UPS driver who earned a quarter of a million dollars last year - or so the application stated. Fictional claims, often involving outside income, are far from unusual.

"If you took into account every person with a lawn care service on the side, there wouldn't be a blade of grass left in the United States," he said.

Investors who buy and sell bonds backed by the mortgage payments of ordinary homeowners have seen bad loans rise and have told lenders and brokers they will no longer buy whole classes of securitized mortgages, which can quickly pull the plug on a prospective home buyer.

Lauren Pephens, managing principal of financial services advisory firm, Pephens & Co., called it the "push-down effect" at a session on loss mitigation at the MBA conference. She said that some buyers have gone to close the deal only to be told that their financing had fallen apart.

All the fudging, the lax underwriting, the push for loans that went on during the housing boom were facilitated by the rapid rise of home prices. Outsized increases in home equity in many U.S. housing markets covered a multitude of sins and encouraged lenders to extend loans to poor risk borrowers.

If an owner couldn't afford to pay the monthly mortgage bill when her hybrid adjustable rate mortgage reset at a much higher interest rate, well, that was just fine. Latest home prices Her home had gone up in value from $200,000 to $300,000 in the interim, and she could tap that extra $100,000 in home equity to pay her bills. If worse came to worse, she could sell her house at a big profit and pay off the entire bill. But when homes became unaffordable for too many buyers starting in 2006, "The people who were driving up prices couldn't drive them up further," said Hardester.

The speculators, the flippers and rehabbers fled. Houses went on the market and just sat. Inventories lengthened, home builders started pulling back and foreclosures climbed.
A drop is seen before recoverySo far the turnaround on prices has not been huge - unless you compare it with what immediately came before. In 2006 the median U.S. home price rose 13.6 percent, and in 2005 it climbed 8.8 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors. Now the industry group has forecast a drop in home prices this year.

MBA's chief economist, Doug Duncan, who was at the conference, predicted his own housing-price decline of 2.7 percent for 2007. Factoring in inflation of about 2 percent, the decline in real dollars is between 4 percent and 5 percent.

Duncan had said a recovery would begin mid-year but he's revised that forecast, delaying his predicted rebound until the fourth quarter of 2007.

Despite their surprise at the speed and depth of the subprime meltdown, Marriott, Lowman and their fellow panelists expected a quicker recovery than Duncan.

The group, which also included Patti Cook, an executive vice president with Freddie Mac, and Thomas Lund, an executive vice president with Fannie Mae, cited a strong economy, low unemployment and favorable demographic growth for their optimistic stance that recovery will come soon.

The recovery will "play out quicker than in the past," according to Lowman, "because [the fall] happened faster than in the past."

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subprime, mortgages, mortgage backed securities,

Labels: mortgage backed securities, mortgages, subprime

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 10:26 AM 0 comments

Subprime woes spark fears of spreading troubles in global markets

Subprime woes spark fears of spreading troubles

As the subprime-mortgage industry declines at a rapid pace, many are concerned with the sector's influence on the markets. The situation has prompted calls for action from lawmakers, and some in the mortgage industry say investors are causing a liquidity crisis.

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What's really at stake in the subprime mortgage market?
Read this to report.


stock market, bonds, mortgages, mortgage backed securities, mbs, subprime

Labels: bonds, MBS, mortgage backed securities, mortgages, stock market, subprime

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 2:32 PM 0 comments

Subprime fiasco troubling because of scale

Subprime fiasco troubling because of scale

The trouble brewing in the subprime-mortgage market has a familiar feel to it, writes Gretchen Morgenson for The New York Times. The real concern, however, is the scale of the trouble as the mortgage-securities market in the U.S. is a $6.5 trillion business.

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Labels: derivatives, mortgage backed securities, mortgages, subprime

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 11:30 AM 0 comments

Pioneer in mortgage-backed securities dislikes the new style market

Pioneer in mortgage-backed securities dislikes the new style market

More so than perhaps any other single person, Lewis Ranieri is the reason that there's a market in mortgage-backed securities. But the legendary trader who helped create the game isn't too pleased by the changes in the market.

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mortgages, MBS, mortgage backed securities

Labels: MBS, mortgage backed securities, mortgages

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 6:01 PM 0 comments

SubPrime spiral can hurt MBS markets

As subprime loan market sinks, worries grow of a wider problem

Twenty-one subprime lenders have filed for bankruptcy since December. The shakeout in the industry, which caters to making home loans to buyers with less-than-desirable credit, may auger more widespread problems in the economy and mortgage-backed securities.

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loans, lending, subprime, mortgages, MBS, mortgage backed securities, bond markets

Labels: bond markets, lending, loans, MBS, mortgage backed securities, mortgages, subprime

posted by Victor Lloyd Smith @ 4:17 PM 0 comments