Sense on Cents

Hat tip to KD for highlighting a recent article in the L.A. Times, States Taking Steps To Turn $8,000 Home Purchase Tax Credit Into Cash. I am a proponent of providing tax incentives for purchasing homes.  Have Uncle Sam and his state brethren morphed into mortgage brokers, though, in the process?

My concern with this program is the discipline provided by lenders working with borrowers under this program. Is the government so desperate to support housing that it will forward a down payment in the form of a short term bridge loan to prospective buyers? If the borrower can not repay the bridge loan when receiving the credit next year, the loan becomes a second lien.

This program will support home purchases. However, irresponsible lending on behalf of unscrupulous lenders did the same. As the L.A. Times reports, 

In recent weeks, at least 10 states say they’ve come up with ways to work this monetary magic. They have created innovative bridge-loan programs that advance credit-eligible buyers the cash they need for their closings. Generally the advances take the form of second mortgages — with or without interest charges — that become due and payable whenever buyers receive their credits in the form of refunds from the Internal Revenue Service.

In Missouri, which was the first state to create such a program, buyers can get a no-cost “tax credit advance” of up to 6% of the home price. The advance is actually an interest-free second lien that is repayable no later than June 2010, once the buyers have received their $8,000 tax credit.

If buyers can’t meet that repayment deadline, the advance morphs into a traditional second mortgage with a 10-year payback term and a fixed interest rate one-half a percentage point higher than their first mortgage rate.

The idea that a prospective borrower may need a second mortgage within 12 months of a home purchase strikes me as an immediate red flag. 

As we enter the brave new world of moral hazard and government control of industry, I guess I am going to have to get used to accepting that fiscal discipline and responsible lending aren’t what they used to be.

LD

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 11:56 AM and is filed under General, Home Loan, Housing Crisis, Mortgage Crisis, Mortgages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.