Sense on Cents

Is Uncle Sam creating another housing fiasco or merely forestalling some pain embedded in the current mess? Hat tip to bonddadddy for bringing my attention to the WSJ editorial today, The Next Housing Bust, which deserves further analysis and promotion.

This WSJ editorial focuses on the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) which insures mortgages via a 100% taxpayer guarantee. In the early part of the decade, the  FHA lost a significant percentage of its market share as borrowers who qualified for these mortgages shifted to “teaser” loans offered by sub-prime mortgage lenders. We all know how that ended.

FHA and VA (Veterans Administration) loans have traditionally been securitized by GNMA (Government National Mortgage Association) and were restricted to a maximum loan size of $362,500. Traditionally, these loans have experienced very low levels of defaults because many of the loans were of much smaller size. Oh, how times are changing! (more…)