Current Housing Indicators |
| CURRENT | PREVIOUS | ||
| Existing Home Sales | 4.49m | ▼ | 4.74m |
| New Home Sales | 309,000 | ▼ | 344,000 |
| Housing Starts | 583,000 | ▲ | 477,000 |
| Building Permits | 547,000 | ▲ | 531,000 |
| HMI | 9 | UNCH | 9 |
| Existing Home Prices | $170,300 | ▼ (annually) | $199,800 |
| New Home Prices | $201,100 | ▼ (annually) | $232,400 |
- Shadow Inventory Dwarfs Loan Mods
- The Battered Businesses Behind Housing
- Watch Foreclosures, Seriously
- Home Buyer Tax Credit Expansion Heads to Obama
- Congratulations America, We're All Landlords Now
- Wells Fargo Bets on Housing Recovery
- Home Buyer Tax Credit Done: Does it Matter?
- Better Times for Mortgage Banking
- 'Beleaguered Big Builders' Sitting On Piles of Cash
- Home Buyer Tax Credit: Final Deal?
MOST SHARED
- Hewlett-Packard to Acquire 3Com for $2.7 Billion in Cash
- USC Football Blog Leads All-Access Space
- How the Droid and Google Threaten the GPS Makers
- Dollar Trouble, Oil's Bubble Could Derail Recovery
- Addicted to Easy Money?
- HPQ to Acquire 3Com
- Shopping for Answers
- Credit Is Thawing, But Businesses Still Hesitant to Borrow
- What to Expect From Disney Earnings?
- HP's Shot Across Cisco's Bow
- USC Football Blog Leads All-Access Space
- Clowning Around At Work
- Ahead of Earnings Disney Restructures Studio
- Nov. 11: Unusual Volume Leaders
- 3 'Clear Sailing' Mid-Caps For Investors: Strategist
- Intimate Apparel Sales Heating Up: Maidenform CEO
- A Day On The USS Harry S. Truman
- Dollar Trouble, Oil's Bubble Could Derail Recovery
- Jobless, Wal-Mart to Drive Sentiment on Thursday
- Hewlett-Packard to Acquire 3Com for $2.7 Billion in Cash
- AIG CEO: I Remain 'Totally Committed' to Firm
- CNN Anchor Lou Dobbs Says He is Leaving Network
- A Day on the USS Harry S. Truman
- How the Droid and Google Threaten the GPS Makers
- Commercial Real Estate Near Disaster: Fund Manager
- This Town Will Pay YOU $10,000 to Buy a House
RSS FEED
Realty Check
![]() |
CNBC.com |
"The "FHA-Secure" program will help people who have good credit but who have not made all of their payments on time because of rising mortgage payments."
Ok, well that's not subprimers, because subprimers by definition have poor credit or no credit at all. I asked the White House to clarify, and got the following email response.
"No -that's not how a subprime is defined. Subprime defined by the product not the borrower. A lot of people took subprime loans because they liked the low teaser rates and wanted to flip their properties after 2 years. Some liked the free plasma TV they got and figured that their home values would rise and they could sell. Some people made dumb decisions thinking that property values can only rise and bought more home than they could afford."
WRONG. I don't know any other more respectful way of saying it. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Anyone, subprime, prime or other could have gone after these low teaser loans. Many did!! I thought I was losing my mind, so I called John Mechem at the Mortgage Bankers Association: "We define subprime loans by borrower characteristics." Plain and simple. It has to do with how the loan is serviced, based on the credit of the borrower.
I read him the email, and he said the same thing. WRONG. So just to make sure I wasn't totally losing my mind (I mean how could the WHITE HOUSE be wrong????) I called Guy Cecala over at Inside Mortgage Finance. Same deal. He went on to say that FHA underwriting standards even if loosened somewhat, would still present a problem due to the credit of the subprime borrower. FHA deals with only the very top tier of subprime borrowers.
I realize the ins and outs of mortgages are really truly complicated, but I would also think that with all those economists over at the White House, a Soviet Studies major like me shouldn't have to explain to THEM what constitutes a subprime loan!
In all fairness, after I emailed the White House source the quotes from my sources, there was about a half hour of radio silence. He then emailed me back and admitted he was 100% wrong.
Questions? Comments?









