The Housing Mess Will Go On

The private sector lenders to the residential housing market are taking matters into their own hands now, after watching the administration accomplish little for nearly four years. The White House has mainly attacked the lenders and servicers and through forced settlements, caused the entire banking sector to transfer tens of billions to the government and states, and to homeowners who have gamed the system with the help of the politicians and the media. While it is surely the case that many mortgage brokers did very bad things, and many servicers and banks were sloppy with their paperwork, the truth is that almost nobody lost their house improperly. I have direct knowledge of people who just stopped paying their mortgage and taxes and just waited it out for three years, knowing that the politicians and government would protect him from foreclosure in the short run. Meantime he has all that extra cash to go on vacations and otherwise enjoy life. At the same time the lenders and servicers are paying $25 billion in fines and offsets, and then there are new ridiculous attacks by the New York AG on MERS. Politicians in New York have proven time and again that becoming attorney general and filing several high profile but unfounded lawsuits is a sure way to become governor. Obama believes that bashing banks and bankers is a good away to get reelected.

In the meantime little has been accomplished to clean up the mess and home prices continue to decline at sizable rates this year in many markets as the stalled foreclosures still overhang the market and will now become principal write downs. The politicians have now ingrained the same too big to fail mentality into the individual homeowner mindset as happened in the banks in 2008. It is just that nobody in Washington or state AG’s or the media will touch that point. Now millions of homeowners know that in tough times the government will ride to their rescue for irresponsible borrowing, (did you say Lehman), and they will get rewarded with a $2000 payment for having been foreclosed. Moral hazard is now part of American culture.