Tag Archives: Housing bubble

Getting Rich On Taxpayer-Backed Subprime Mortgages

Financial Markets, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, U.S. Economy, , , ,

A branch manager gets home loans for borrowers with weak credit or low incomes—and taxpayers back him up. – Bloomberg.com

Bloomberg News featured a story today that I find to be an outrage. It seems that some punk kid in Houston – Angelo Christian – has recreated the Jordan Belfort story (“The Wolf Wall Street”) using subprime quality, Government-backed mortgage.

The Government now guarantees mortgages which require no money from the buyer’s pocket for a down payment, a 50% DTI (monthly total debt payments = 50% of pre-tax personal income), no income restrictions and will finance down to a 580 credit score. Someone with a 580 score has a track record of debt default, serial delinquency and, quite likely, a recent bankruptcy:

This would-be homeowner has a 596 credit score, putting him in the subprime range. His car has been repossessed, something that would likely disqualify him at the Bank of America branch next door.

“Usually a repo that’s like three years old, we’re not really going to sweat that,” he assures the caller. “We’re pretty lenient here.” He steers his prospect to several $400,000 homes with swimming pools. “Have your wife check that out,” he says, referring to a remodeled kitchen with granite countertops. “She’s going to love it.”

Christian works for American Financial Network, which underwrites, funds and services the entire spectrum of Taxpayer-guaranteed mortgage programs:  Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, VHA and USDA (yes, the USDA guarantees “rural area” zero-percent down mortgages).  AFN receives fees up to 5% – or $15,000 – a on $300,000 mortgage.  This in and of itself is an outrage because it takes zero skill to underwrite a Government-backed mortgage.

“Zero-skill,” that is, unless fraud is involved.  I’m not accusing AFN of fraudulent activity, however, as we witnessed during the Big Short housing bubble, fraud was oozing from every crevice in the U.S. mortgage underwriting industry.   And subprime mortgages pumped and dumped by a character like Angelo Christian are usually the standard breeding ground for unscrupulous behavior.

Even Bloomberg expressed skepticism:  “This kind of lending echoes the subprime mortgage boom that preceded the credit crisis of 2008.”

In civil fraud complaints, the Department of Justice has accused many companies, including Quicken and Freedom Mortgage, of improperly underwriting FHA loans and then filing claims for government insurance after borrowers defaulted. In 2016, Freedom Mortgage settled for $113 million, without admitting liability.

Angelo Christian and American Financial Network use Taxpayer guarantees to underwrite mortgages with an elevated probability of default and yet, they bear zero risk.  They pocket a big fee-skim upfront and face no consequences when the 580 FICO score borrower declares bankruptcy – again.  Just for the record, after accounting for a 0-3% down payment plus all transactions costs – which approximate 10% of the cost of the home – these mortgages are upside-down vs. the value of the “net” value of the house at close.  Not a good business deal for the Taxpayers.  

FHA loans are now experiencing a 30-day or more delinquency rate with nearly 10% of its loans.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac combined wrote-down over $15 billion worth of loans in Q4 2017.  They required a $4 billion cash infusion from the Government (taxpayer) as a result of both accounting and cash losses.

This is going to get worse.   But until this collapses again – and it will – mortgage brokers like Angelo Christian are proliferating.  They employ a salesmanship resembling that of dirty boulevard used car salesmen (“we finance any credit / bankruptcy o.k.”) as a means of transferring a massive amount of money from the Taxpayer to their own pockets.

I would urge everyone to read this Bloomberg article so you can read about how Angelo uses taxpayer-funded fees to pay for his fancy sports cars in exchange for pushing subprime mortgages destined to blow-up onto people who have no hope of supporting the cost of home ownership on a sustainable basis.

 

Gold And Silver Are Extremely Undervalued

Financial Markets, Gold, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , , , , , ,

Patrick Vierra of Singapore Bullion invited me to discuss precious metals, the stock market and the fiat currency-fueled asset bubbles that will blow-up sooner or later.  I explain why investing in gold requires a long term perspective on investing and wealth preservation, why gold and mining stocks are extremely undervalued right now and why the world wants out of the U.S. dollar.

Singapore Bullion is Singapore-based bullion dealer and bullion storage facility with a wide-array of products and services – the podcast is ad-free:

01:37 Gold – A Long Term Perspective
08:14 Was 2015 the bottom for gold price?
13:14 Gold – One of the Best Performing Assets
14:45 Bullion vs Mining Stocks
17:10 Gold is very undervalued right now
19:20 The COMEX cycle that impacts the gold price
21:47 Silver will outperform gold
25:00 How overvalued are the stock markets
30:11 How every U.S pension funds will ‘blow up’
32:40 The ratio of paper to physical gold
35:01 Housing bubble rearing its head again
39:51 “Trump loves debt!”
41:09 Fed rate hike to prick the housing bubble?
45:25 The world wants out of the dollar

You can learn more about my research and stock idea newsletters here:

MINING STOCK JOURNAL                                     SHORT SELLER’S JOURNAL

The Mining Stock Journal is twice per month, every other Thursday evening. The Short Seller’s Journal is weekly, every Sunday evening. The last mining stock purchase recommendation (May 17th issue) is up 10.5% in the last five trading days. It’s going higher – a lot higher.  My Short Seller’s Journal subscribers have been raking in the profits in my homebuilder short ideas.

Homebuilder Stocks: A Short-Seller’s ATM

Financial Markets, Housing Market, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , , ,

Someone or some entity – likely a hedge fund – bought 4500 September $35-strike puts on XHB on Thursday last week when XHB was trading just above $39. That’s a $225,000 speculative bet that the XHB drops more than 15% by mid-September.

This morning Toll Brothers stock plunged over 7% this morning after reporting its FY Q2 earnings, missing the Wall Street brain trust consensus estimates on both revenues and income. Deliveries are slowing down, expenses are soaring (energy and lumber)and asset write-downs are accelerating. On top of this, TOL’s debt and inventory levels continue to rise.

Typical of developers, TOL will continue to use other people’s money to speculate on real estate until the market crashes, leaving creditors and shareholders holding the bag. The Company bought back 1.8 million shares. TOL has repurchased 6.2 million in its fiscal YTD. Into this buyback, insiders have dumped nearly 800,000 shares. Not one share was purchased by insiders.

I’ve been recommending shorting the homebuilders in my Short Seller’s Journal for several months. Many of my subscribers and I are making a lot money with both short term scalps and longer term puts. The best part of about this is that very few market players trade the homebuilders. This makes it easier to take advantage of inefficient price-discovery. As an example, Zack’s Equity Research was looking for an upside surprise and spike-up in the stock as recently as yesterday.

TOL’s contract cancellation rate, which has been historically well below average, rose substantially (at least for TOL) in its latest quarter, as explained by Aaron Layman, of Aaron Layman Properts:   TOL Trips On Higher Cancellation Rate.

The homebuilders are historically overvalued, especially in relation to the level of unit sales, which are still about  50% below the peak in 2005.  They also have a lot more debt and inventory relative to the unit rate of sales.  Shorting the homebuilders is the easiest area of the market to make money right now.

You can learn the truth the about the condition of the housing market and why homebuilders are down double-digits percentages this year by clicking here:  Short Seller’s Journal information.   In addition to shorting shares, I make suggestion on using puts and market timing (I use puts).  I also report every put trade I make in each issue.

 

Are The Wheels Coming Off The System?

Financial Markets, Gold, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , , ,

The dollar is said to be “soaring,” though I take issue with that characterization for now (see the chart below);  10-yr Treasury yields are also rising, though the yield on the 10-yr is only up about 67 basis points if you measure from January 1, 2017.  What’s really going on?

Ten years of money printing by the Federal Reserve has removed true price discovery from the markets.  The best evidence is the inexorable rise in the stock market despite the fact that corporate earnings have been driven largely by share buybacks and GAAP accounting gimmicks.  Measuring stock values  on the basis of revenue and revenue growth multiples would reveal the most overvalued stock market in U.S. history.

Now that the Fed has stopped printing money used to buy Treasury issuance and prop up the banks, the system is vulnerable to relatively small increases in interest rates.  20 years ago, when I was trading junk bonds on Wall St, a 60 basis point rise in the 10yr or a 200 basis point rise in the dollar index would have be a non-event.  Now those types of moves permeate the current market and policy narrative.

In fact, the Fed is terrified by the Frankenstein stock market is has created to the extent that, since the sharp decline in August 2015, the Fed steps in to prevent the inevitable crash when a draw-down in the Dow/SPX approaches 10%.

With the dollar moving higher, gold is has been sluggish. Now the price is being attacked aggressively in the paper gold derivatives market.  The propaganda is that a rising dollar and rising rates are negative for gold.  However, gold had one of its best rate or return periods from mid-2005 to mid-2006 while the dollar was spiking higher.  More troubling, the trading pattern in gold and the dollar reminds me of the same pattern in 2008 – just before the de facto financial system collapse hit the hardest (click on image to enlarge):

The economy has been in a recession for most households below the top 1% in wealth and income. This chart is one of many examples showing that most households are not even fortunate enough to be living on the economic gerbil wheel. Instead, they are sliding backwards downhill in their debt/lease-saddled vehicle and the brakes are about to go out:

I would argue that the rising dollar – an concomitantly the obvious official attack on the price of gold – is the signal that the wheels are coming off the system. The Government issued nearly half-a-trillion dollars in Treasuries in Q1, thanks to the soaring defense and entitlement budget  combined with the massive tax cuts. The spending deficit and the flood of Treasury issuance is going to get worse from there and well beyond the CBO’s sanguine projections.

Throw in soaring oil and gasoline prices and rising household debt delinquency/default rates against a backdrop of stagnant wages and an accelerating ratio of household debt service payments to personal income and it’s pretty obvious that the wheels are coming off the system.

The U.S. economic and financial system is an enormously fraudulently Ponzi scheme in which record levels of money printing and credit creation have acted as temporary bandages placed over gaping cancerous economic wounds that are soon going to start hemorrhaging.

The homebuilders are already in a bear market, like the one that started in mid-2005 in the same stocks about 18 months before the stock market started heading south in 2007. My Short Seller’s Journal subscribers and I are raking in a small fortune shorting and buying puts on homebuilder stocks. As an example, I recommended shorting Hovnanian (HOV) at $2.88 in early January. It’s trading at $1.78 as I write this – a 38.2% ROR in 4 months. Anyone get that with AMZN in the last 4 months? You can learn more about the SSJ here: Short Seller’s Journal.

Sparks Fly Toward The Debt Powder Keg

Financial Markets, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, U.S. Economy, , , ,

The stock market has gone 74 days without making a new high but that hasn’t stopped the bulls from boasting about how it is up or flat six days in a row. I still say to sell into strength – David Rosenberg, Gluskin-Sheff

The narrative that the economy continues to improve is a myth, if not intentional mendacious propaganda. The economy can’t possibly improve with the average household living from paycheck to paycheck while trying to service hopeless levels of debt. In fact, the economy will continue to deteriorate from the perspective of every household below the top 1% in terms of income and wealth.

Theoretically, the Trump tax cuts will add about $90 per month of extra after-tax income for the average household. However, the average price of gasoline has risen close to 40% over the last year (it cost me $45 to fill my tank last week vs about $32 a year ago) For most households, the tax cut “windfall” will be largely absorbed by the increasing cost to fill the gas tank, which is going to continue rising. The highly promoted economic boost from the tax cuts will, instead, end up as a transfer payment to oil companies.

The Fed reported consumer credit for March last week. Consumer credit is primarily credit card, auto and student loan debt. The 3.6% SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate) rate of increase over February was the slowest growth rate in consumer debt since September. Credit card debt outstanding actually dropped 3% (SAAR). But the 6% growth in non-revolving debt – auto/student loans – rose 6% (SAAR). Given the double-digit increase in truck sales in March, which offset the double digit decline in sedan sales, it’s safe to speculate that the increase in consumer credit during March was primarily loans to “buy” trucks/SUVs.

Remember, the average light truck/SUV sales ticket is about $13k more than for a sedan, which means that the average size of auto loans in March increased significantly during March. This is a horrifying thought in my opinion. Here’s why (original chart source was Wolfstreet.com):

As you can see, the rate of subprime 60-day-plus delinquencies is nearly 6%, which is substantially higher than during the peak financial crisis years. Why is this not directly affecting the system yet? It is but we’re not seeing it because the banks are still sitting on unused “excess reserves” – pain killers – that were given to them by the Fed’s QE program. The excess reserves act to “buffer” the banks from debt defaults, which in turn enables the banks to defer taking these auto loans into foreclosure and writing them off. But this will only serve to defer the inevitable:  debt defaults in quantities that will far exceed the amount of debt that blew up in the 2008 financial crisis.  Bank excess reserves are down 13% since August 2017.

I knew at the time that the Fed’s QE program was a part of the Fed’s strategy to build a “cushion” into bank balance sheets for the next time around. The only problem is that the size of the debt bomb has grown disproportionately to the size of the “cushion” and it’s only a matter of time before debt defaults blow a big hole in bank balance sheets.

Here’s the other problem with the statistic above. The regulators, along with FICO, lowered the bar on differentiating between prime and subprime. Despite the supposed effort to tighten lending standards since 2008, it’s just as easy to get a loan now as it was in 2007 and the variables that differentiate sub-prime from prime have blurred. I witnessed this first-hand when I accompanied a friend to buy a near-new car from a major Audi dealer in Denver. Based on monthly income, I advised him to buy a less expensive car. But Wells Fargo was more than happy to make the loan with very little money down relative to the cost of the car. No proof of income disclosure was necessary despite being self-employed. The friend’s credit rating is a questionable mid-600’s

This is the type of loan transaction that occurs 1000’s of times each day at car dealers across the country. If we had gone to one of the seedy “finance any credit” used car dealers, getting the loan would have been even easier because those car brokers also use credit unions and other non-bank private capital “pools” like Credit Acceptance Corporation (CACC) and Exeter Finance (private).

Student loans are not worth discussing because no one else does. Someone with a student loan outstanding can easily put the loan into “deferment” or “forbearance,” which makes it difficult to assess the true delinquency/default rate on the $1.53 trillion amount outstanding (as of the end of March). However, I have seen estimates that the real rate of serious delinquency is more like 40%. Most borrowers who defer or request forbearance do so because they can’t make current payments. Again, this is one of the bigger “white elephants” that is visible but not discussed (the $21+ trillion of Treasury debt is another white elephant).

The debt bubble and implosion will push homebuilder stocks off the cliff.   Several of my subscribers plus myself are raking in money shorting and buying puts on homebuilders stocks.  I took 50% profits on the puts I bought late last week.

The commentary above is an excerpt from last Sunday’s Short Seller’s Journal. My Short Seller’s Journal is a unique newsletter that presents the alternative to the “bull” case. It also presents short ideas, along with put strategies, every week. You can learn more about this newsletter here:  Short Seller’s Journal information.

 

Subprime Mortgages: The Dog Returns To Its Vomit

Financial Markets, Housing Market, U.S. Economy, , , ,

Other people’s money is always more fun to play with recklessly than your own.  As such there’s been a quiet escalation in number of  private capital pools offering mortgage (and auto) financing to subprime quality borrowers.  “Special Circumstance Lending” is one such lender in Denver.  It constantly runs ads on Denver radio.

The proprietor of Special Circumstance Lending was an aggressive participant in the junk mortgage underwriting business and dumped more than his fair share of subprime crap into the Wall Street mortgage securitization scheme that led to “The Big Short.” SCL doesn’t need to see your tax returns.  It will give you a mortgage based on bank account statements.

The big Wall Street banks appear to have retreated from risky mortgage lending.  But have they? Though new regulations are intended to limit the amount risk the big banks take underwriting mortgages , the banks instead extend large lines of credit to private “non-bank” mortgage lenders, like Exeter Finance.  The average credit score of Exeter underwritten paper is 570.   If Exeter doesn’t get repaid, the big banks extending the funds to underwrite that garbage won’t get repaid.

The Government, via Fannie Mae and  Freddie Mac, has been underwriting de-facto  subprime mortgages – though they are still labeled “prime” for securitization purposes – for a couple of years.  Let’s face it, a 3% down payment mortgage – where the 3% does not have to come from the pocket of the homebuyer – with a 50% DTI (50% of pre-tax monthly income is used to service debt) is not a prime-grade piece of paper. I don’t care what the credit score is attached to that underwriting.

But Freddie Mac is taking it one step further down the sewer. A Short Seller’s Journal subscriber who is involved with an investment fund that invests in difficult financings sent me the flyer he received for the new Freddie Mac dog vomit mortgage:  “I occasionally process residential mortgages, so I stay on top of the underwriting guidelines…As of July 29, you can buy a single family / condo (there has to be a first time homebuyer on the deed), with ZERO DOWN AND A 620 CREDIT SCORE, WITH NO INCOME RESTRICTIONS. I had a stroke when I read that!”

There is no minimum borrower contribution from borrower personal funds.  Furthermore, borrowers who put down 5% do not have to have a credit score.

The mortgages now offered by the Federal Government are beginning to look and smell like the same sub-prime sewage that was proliferated by Countrywide, Wash Mutual, etc in the mid-2000’s.  True, as of yet we have not seen a widespread issuance of the adjustable-rate ticking time bombs that triggered the financial crisis. But the U.S. Government, using your taxpayer dollars, has become the new subprime lender of first resort for first time homebuyers who have little financial capability of supporting the cost of home ownership for an extended period of time.

Like the dog returning to its vomit, the U.S. financial system has returned to the business of underwriting the next financial crisis.   Only this time around the Federal Government is providing a large share of the “rope” with which new homebuyers will eventually hang themselves.  The financial explosion that is going occur will be worse than 2008 because the average household has significantly more debt relative to income now, with more than 75% of all households living from paycheck to paycheck.  One small hiccup in the economy will trigger an avalanche of debt defaults.

Despite what seems like a strong housing market and buoyant stock market, the XHB homebuilder ETF is down 15.4% since mid-January. Many individual homebuilder stocks are down a lot more. My subscribers and I are making a small fortune shorting and trading puts on homebuilder stocks.  You can learn more about my subscription newsletter here:  Short Seller’s Journal information

 

Homebuilder Stocks Are In A “Bear Market”

Financial Markets, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, U.S. Economy, , , ,

I strongly believe that labeling the condition of the stock market based on arbitrary “percentage changes” up or down is absurd.  But then again most attributes of the current stock market are sublimely ridiculous, if not outright Orwellian.

But, what the heck. If down 20% is how you want to define a “bear market,” then a portfolio of Lennar (LEN, down 24%), Beazer (BZH, down 24%) and KB Homes (KBH, down 22%) are in definitive bear markets and heading lower, as are several other homebuilder stocks. This is a fact that intentionally goes unreported by Wall Street and Wall Street’s hand-puppet, the mainstream financial media (CNBC, Fox Biz, Bloomberg, Wall St Journal, Marketwatch, etc).

Homebuilders maliciously exploit a GAAP loophole that enables them to remove “interest expense” from the SEC-filed income statement. This artificially boosts reported GAAP and non-GAAP net income/earnings per share. I review this using Beazer as an example in the last issue of the Short Seller’s Journal.

The nature of the “bull market” in housing is widely misunderstood. As such, the easiest area of the market to make money shorting stocks is the homebuilding sector. I can say with certainty that 80% of the money I’m making shorting stocks is with homebuilder puts. It’s a boring sector but the percentages moves in these stocks makes it easy to “scalp” profits and to set-up low risk, highly profitable long term short positions.

 

Right now homebuilders are behaving like an ATM machine for short-sellers.

The Short Seller’s Journal is a unique weekly newsletter that provides truth-seeking insight on the economy and presents ideas for making money shorting stocks (including put option and capital management strategies). Learn how to use the homebuilders as your own ATM here: Short Seller’s Journal.

The Fed Successfully Destroyed The U.S. Housing Market

Financial Markets, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, U.S. Economy, , , ,

What concerns me is when people put their hard-earned money into housing or any other supposed store of value thinking that the sky is the limit. We are living in an age of epic distortions, misinformation and outright fraud. – Aaron Layman, Dallas-based Realtor, member of the Dallas and Houston MLS boards and a housing market analyst

The propaganda about a hot economy, “overheated” housing market and tight labor market is just one of several Big Lies being promoted by politicians and business leaders. The article below references a comment made by a money manager about the housing market “overheating.” But the housing market isn’t overheating. What’s overheating is the amount of “conforming” mortgage debt underwritten by the Federal Government on behalf of taxpayer. I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow.

The transformation of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the FHA and the VHA into the new subprime debt provider has caused a shortage of homes under $500k, or under $600k in “high price” zones. But there’s an oversupply of homes north of $700k in most areas (the Silicon Valley area notwithstanding). But more on this tomorrow.

A colleague and email acquaintance, Aaron Layman, is a realtor in Houston who has been uniquely outspoken about the degree to which the current housing market is unhealthy and dysfunctional. I say “uniquely” because 99.9% of all realtors would sell a roach motel trap to cockroaches if they knew that they could get the cockroach qualified for a Taxpayer-backed mortgage to make that particular purchase (“hey man, this is a good value and prices are only going higher”).

Aaron has written a blog post which details the manner in which the Fed has destroyed the housing market and economy:

If you are out shopping for a home during this summer selling season and you are having a difficult time finding a good property at a reasonable price, be sure to thank the folks at the Fed for their fine work. Destroying a market takes some effort, particularly if you account for all of the PR necessary to cover your tracks. The Federal Reserve and their army of economists have created another fine mess in the U.S. housing market, destroying real price discovery and distorting the real value of a home which is end-user shelter.

Please use this link to read the entire essay – it’s worth your time:  The Fed Has Destroyed The Housing Market

Homebuilder Stocks: Overvalued, Over-Leveraged And Going Lower

Financial Markets, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, U.S. Economy, , , , ,

I continue to believe that the “lowest hanging fruit” in shorting this stock market is the homebuilders and related stocks. History appears to be repeating, or at least “rhyming” in the housing sector:

Most investors do not realize this, because the majority of traders and “professional” money managers were still in college or b-school during the 2007-early 2009 stock market collapse, but the homebuilding sector actually peaked and began a waterfall decline in mid-2005 (see the chart above).

The propaganda narrative is that this time around the subprime mortgage issuance has been contained by regulation.  This is patently false.  The subprime mortgage game shifted from largely private underwriters to the Federal Government, starting in 2008.  Because the Government is involved, it has been well disguised in a “conforming” mortgage costume based on Federal Housing Finance Agency “requirments.”  Well, more like “guidelines” than requirements.

The FHA began offering 3.5% down payment Federally guaranteed mortgages in 2008.  Its underwriting market share went from 2% to 20%.  Not to be outdone, Fannie and Freddie began to offer 3% down payment, reduced PMI mortgages a few years later.  Not to be outdone by themselves, and after Fannie reported a $6 billion Q4 loss and required  a $3.7 billion cash infusion from the Taxpayers, Fannie and Freddie raised the DTI limit on conforming mortgages to 50%.  If the housing market is healthy, why is Fannie Mae receiving cash infusions?  A 50% DTI means that the mortgage applicant requires 50% of its gross monthly income to service its monthly debt payments (mortgage, credit car, auto, etc).

A 3% down payment, 50% DTI mortgage is subprime garbage.  It also implies that the FICO score is a farce.  Some who requires a 3% (in many cases less) downpayment with a 50% DTI  does not have prime credit rating.   After the DTI ceiling was raised in December, new  mortgages with DTI’s in excess of 45% jumped from 5% to 20%  of all mortgage issuance in January and February.  This subprime mania in its essence – though not name – and will lead to another massive Fannie/Freddie/FHA/VHA bailout.

All of the signs of the top of the last bubble are re-emerging. Home equity “cash out” loans are soaring again at what is likely peak home prices. According to Freddie Mac, cash-out “refis” are at their highest level since 2008.

We saw how this movie ended the last time around. If you forgot, rent “The Big Short.”  A private investment management company in California, Carrington Holding Company, has a mortgage lending facility that will now underwrite and fund mortgages to borrowers with credit scores as low as 500. Carrington will do loans up $1.5 million on homes/condos and home equity cash outs up to $500k. Recent credit events like foreclosure, bankruptcy or a history of late payments are acceptable. This business plan will not end well.

I recently saw a “for sale” in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Denver which advertised, “no money down, lender on site.” If the market is “hot,” why is this house being marketed as “no money down” and why is a lender at the open house? Is this a Volkswagon “sign and drive” transaction or this is a several $100k  home “purchase”  at what is likely the market peak?

This is in an area in which the average home sells for over $600k, which means unless the buyer puts down at least $70k, it can’t be backed by one of the Government mortgage agencies (the max loan limit for a conventional mortgage in Denver County $530k – in most areas of the country, the maximum loan size for a conventional Govt mortgage is $453k – Denver County is considered a “high price” area and thus the Government will underwrite a larger mortgage – “guidelines,” not “rules”).

This is the type of home borrowing that occurred in the last couple years of the mid-2000’s housing bubble. That “open house” sign also tells me that the market for homes that can’t be funded without Government assistance is deteriorating.

This housing market is unfolding in an eerily similar manner as the mid-2000’s bubble. Sales volume, prices and rental rates are starting to literally crash in New York City, as I’ve detailed in the last couple of issues. I read an article that said, based on the current sales rate, Miami has a built up a 6-year supply of condominiums. Again, the last time around the bubble began to pop first in NYC and south Florida. Phoenix and Vegas followed those two cities. As I presented last week, the move by Zillow Group to get into house-flipping is the signal for me that those two cities have peaked.

The Short Seller’s Journal provides unique insight to the economic data and corporate earnings – insight you’ll never get from so-called financial “experts.”  SSJ then offers ideas every week for making money on this insight.   To learn more, click here:  Short Seller’s Journal subscription information

 

Subprime Mortgages Come Roaring Back…

Financial Markets, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, U.S. Economy, , , , ,

…Only this time around they are sponsored by the U.S. Government and guaranteed explicitly by the Taxpayers. I say “explicitly” because Government agency-issued mortgages are directly guaranteed. This isn’t reason enough to go investing in property haphazardly though; always make sure you hire companies like Mold Inspection Wilmington NC to check for structural issues first.
In 2008, the Government bailed out the banks who had issued subprime mortgages and related derivatives, but the Taxpayer never signed up for the multi-trillion dollar bailout, which largely transferred wealth from the middle class taxpayer to the Too Big To Fail bank executives.

In an attempt to off-set the falling velocity in the housing market, taxpayer-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have reduced their credit standards on guaranteed conventional mortgages several times over the last 3 years. With the help of an advisor like Bolton Mortgage Advisor, in 2015 they reduced the down payment requirement to 3% from 5%. In addition, they reduced the amount mortgage insurance required on mortgages with less than 10% down. Then they allowed “soft dollar” contributions to count as part of the 3% down payment, like seller concessions or realtor commission concessions. They also allowed homebuyers to use loans from other sources to fund the down payment. In this manner, a homebuyer could prospectively buy a home with a taxpayer-guaranteed mortgage using no cash out pocket. If you’re interested in expanding your knowledge on how to get a mortgage and get the right one for you, read this interesting article at CCJ mortgage.

Then last June (2017) Fannie and Freddie raised the Debt To Income (DTI) ratio from 45% to 50%. DTI is the ratio of monthly debt payments (all forms of household debt payments) to the borrower’s monthly gross income. A borrower with a DTI of 50%, including the new mortgage, is using 50% of monthly net income to make debt payments (mortgage, credit cart, auto, student loans, personal loans).

The chart on the right shows the spike-up in the number of conventional mortgages issued by Fannie and Freddie once the DTI was raised (source: Corelogic w/my edits). As you can see, before the DTI was raised the number of mortgages issued with a DTI over 45% was one in twenty. After the change, the one in five new mortgages backed by the taxpayer were issued to homebuyers with a DTI over 45%. This is, by far, the highest level of high-DTI mortgages since the financial crisis.

But the story gets worse. The Urban Institute conducted a study of high DTI mortgages and discovered that 25% of all Fannie Mae mortgages issued to borrowers with a credit score below 700 had a DTI over 45% in just the first two months of 2018. This is up from 19% a year earlier. This is after Fannie Mae reported a $6.5 billion loss in Q4 2017 that the taxpayers will cover. The Government raised the DTI in order to stimulate home sales by inducing households, who could otherwise not afford the monthly cost of home ownership, into taking on even more debt to purchase a home. The majority of these home “buyers” will ultimately default and the taxpayer will get the privilege of eating the loss.

Zillow Group Is Now Flipping Homes? – Zillow Group stock plunged as much as 11% on Friday after it announced that it would be adding home flipping to its home-listing services. Clearly the market was spooked by this announcement – and for good reason. The plan will significantly raise ZG’s risk profile and will require the assumption of $10’s of millions in debt, depending on the number of homes ZG holds on its balance sheet any given time. It’s plan now forecasts holding up to 1,000 homes by year-end.

ZG stock is extraordinarily overvalued. The Company released its Q4 and full-year 2017 earnings on February 8th and the numbers had little affect on ZG’s stock. ZG continues to generate operating and net losses. It incurred a $174 million intangibles write-down in Q4 2017 that was related to its 2015 acquisition of Trulia. While the Company and Wall St. analysts will remove this write-down as “non-recurring, non-cash,” it is indeed a write-down that occurred to an asset for which Zillow overpaid by at least $174 million. As the housing market fades, ZG will likely incur bigger write-downs of its “intangibles and goodwill,” which represents 85% of ZG’s book value.

The move into home-flipping signals, at least in my view, that ZG has determined that its current business model will never be profitable. The decision to test home flipping in Phoenix and Vegas can be seen as desperate attempt to generate income. Ironically, in the last housing bubble, flippers in those two markets were decimated. I don’t see how this will end well for ZG, especially now that Congress is exploring rules changes to Fannie and Freddie that will raise the cost of conventional mortgages. The conventional mortgage user is the prime market for home flippers and now the average conventional mortgage applicant has de facto sub-prime credit.

By the way, just for the record, on average and in general, home prices are coming down quickly in most markets. Case Shiller is severely lagged data and it emphasizes price gains from flips. Robert Shiller used to admit to these facts publicly. Now he’s a bubble cheerleader like everyone else who sold out.

Taxpayer: Get ready to eat more losses on the housing and mortgage market.

The commenetary above is from my latest Short Seller’s Journal. For the past several issues I have been focusing on both short-term and long-term homebuilder short ideas. Several of my subscribers have told me they are making double-digit percentage gains on the ideas presented. You can learn more about this unique newsletter here: Short Seller’s Journal information.

“LEN! Bagged another 30% on April $60 puts. Of course took some profits and added more to other ideas” – subscriber email last week