Broker Compensation Patterns and Trends: 2005–2009

Changes in the mortgage industry have been swiftly effected over the past few years. Many of the changes have come about as a response to the high level of observed delinquencies and defaults on residential mortgages as house prices plummeted, and others have evolved from continuing concerns about the treatment of borrowers during the mortgage origination process. The segmented mortgage industry of the early part of the decade, with loans being originated in the prime, subprime and government mortgage sectors, has been largely replaced with a bifurcated system. By year end 2010, the FHA/VA (government sector) combined with the conventional, conforming market share of originations was 90.8?%. In this paper, we examine some of the observed trends and changes in the types and levels of broker compensation that existed before the regulatory change that brought about the implementation of the Federal Reserve Board??s (FRB) new loan officer compensation rule. Among other questions, we examine the variance in broker compensation across geographies, across lenders, across borrower types, and across loan products. The intent of this ex post analysis is to provide an understanding of the potential impacts of the declining broker industry on both access to mortgage loans and on the pricing of mortgage originations.     

Prepayment behaviors of Japanese residential mortgages

We investigate full prepayments of Japanese residential mortgages during a ten-year period from 1996 to 2005. This investigation is important because the amount of mortgages outstanding in Japan is huge, yet the study on their prepayments is very limited. This period from 1996 to 2005 was characterized by two distinct features of the evolution of interest rates that might have significant effects on mortgage refinancing. First, interest rate fluctuations were limited to a narrow range of a little over 1%. Surprisingly, full prepayments of Japanese mortgages were sensitive to small changes in interest rates. Second, long-term refinance rates did not fall well below the contract rates of most mortgages in our sample during the ten-year period, while short-term refinance rates did. With this interest rate relationship, if mortgagors ever refinanced, it was likely that they rolled over short-term mortgage rates several times until they repaid mortgages completely. Hence, we examine the sensitivity of full prepayments to short-term vs. long-term interest rates, mortgagors’ expectation of future course of interest rates (by the slope of yield curve), and that of interest rate volatility. Our analysis shows that short-term interest rates have a slightly greater explanatory power for full prepayments than long-term interest rates. In addition, our analysis confirms that full prepayments are sensitive to both the slope of yield curve and interest rate volatility. Other issues we look into are the patterns of full prepayments in relation to loan age and seasonality. We find that the pattern of full prepayments relative to loan age is comparable to that of mortgages in the U.S., and that the seasonal pattern of full prepayments is attributable to relevant institutional arrangements in Japan.     

Debt dilution in 1920s America: lighting the fuse of a mortgage crisis

The idea that real estate could have contributed to banking crises during the Great Depression has been downplayed due to the conservatism of mortgage contracts at the time. For instance, loan‐to‐value ratios often did not exceed 50 per cent. Using newly discovered archival documents and data from 1934, this article uncovers a darker side of 1920s US mortgage lending: the so‐called ‘second mortgage system’. As borrowers often could not make a 50 per cent down payment, a majority of them took second mortgages at usurious rates. As theory predicts, debt dilution, even in the presence of seniority rules, can be highly detrimental to both junior and senior lenders. The probability of default on first mortgages was likely to increase, and commercial banks were more likely to foreclose. Through foreclosure they would still be able to retrieve 50 per cent of the property value, but often after a protracted foreclosure process. This would have put further strain on banks during liquidity crises. This article is thus a timely reminder that second mortgages, or ‘piggyback loans’ as they are called today, can be hazardous to lenders and borrowers alike. It provides further empirical evidence that debt dilution can be detrimental to credit.     

Bank lending and real estate in Asia: market optimism and asset bubbles

This paper investigates the Asian real estate price run-up and collapse in the 1990s. We identify financial intermediaries’ underpricing of the put option imbedded in non-recourse mortgage loans as a potential cause for the observed price behavior. This underpricing is due to behavioral causes (lender optimism and disaster myopia) and/or rational response of lenders to market incentives (agency conflicts, deposit insurance, or limited liability of bank shareholders). The empirical evidence suggests that underpricing occurred in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Consequently, these countries experienced a more severe market crash than Hong Kong and Singapore, where underpricing was kept under control by strong government intervention and/or more appropriate incentive mechanisms.     

Why are mortgage rates so uniform?

Conclusion Any reasonable model of mortgage lending concludes that interest rates depend on loan and borrower characteristics. In this paper, the rate is a function of the loan-to-value ratio, the parameters of the densities of future price of housing and income, deposit rate, and cost of foreclosure. Nevertheless, in practice, each lender charges only one rate to all borrowers. This is first explained by the difficulty of estimation of the parameters of the density functions. Since lenders cannot categorize their borrowers, they treat them uniformly and set minimum standards to minimize the risk of default by each borrower. Mortgage insurance, moreover, enables lenders to lend risklessly outside of the range in which they can operate risklessly on their own. Second, mortgage rate uniformity is explained by the lenders' risk aversion. Third, when borrowers are separated into discrete categories, uniform rates can result from perfect categorization of borrowers with respect to the future value of the relevant random variables. It is more likely, however, that lenders cannot categorize borrowers perfectly and that interest rates vary substantially among categories. As rates jump from one category to the next and borrowers are reluctant to gain small increases in loan size at significantly higher rates, lenders respond by offering only the basic category of loans.     

长期和短期性住宅价格泡沫存在性检验——以上海住宅市场为例

本文以上海住宅市场为例,采用单位根与协整检验及误差纠正模型方法,检验长期和短期性住宅价格泡沫的存在性。通过引入住宅抵押贷款信贷额度这一新的变量,本文将抵押贷款利率对住宅价格的影响非线性化,得到了与一般经济理论相符的协整方程。结论表明,上海市住宅市场在长期并不存在泡沫,但在短期内存在价格泡沫。另外,住宅市场的结构性变化对价格泡沫存在性的结论具有一定影响。     

The New Deal and the origins of the modern American real estate loan contract

The fully amortized mortgage loan contract is an important instance of financial innovation in the U.S. residential mortgage market. We examine the adoption of this contract from the 1880s to the 1930s by building and loan (B&L) associations, the nation's most important institutional home mortgage lenders at the time. A chain of complementary innovations by B&Ls gradually reduced the costs of adopting amortization, supporting moderate use by the 1920s. During the crisis of the 1930s, the poor performance of the traditional B&L loan contract radically increased the benefit of adoption, as borrowers demanded the new contract. The adoption examined here occurred primarily in the conventional loan market because B&Ls, unlike other lenders, generally avoided the use of the new Federal Housing Administration insurance program. The New Deal may have had more impact through new federal savings and loan charters, which incorporated many of the complementary innovations that supported the new form of lending.     

The Subprime Mortgage Calamity and the African American Woman

Many media and scholarly reports have focused on the subprime mortgage crisis and the resultant global financial meltdown. Most of the literature notes unequivocally that discrimination in the mortgage market has been, and remains, race-based and that it has damaged the African-American population disproportionately. This paper discusses the consequences of the subprime mortgage calamity and its negative impact on the Black community, women in general, and African-American women in particular. After controlling for individual, credit and housing characteristics, research shows that disparities in lending have persisted. Studies indicate that 63% of those given subprime mortgages qualified for prime mortgages. African-American females received the most high-cost loans and were over twice as likely to be given a subprime mortgage compared to White females. Moreover, African-American women were five times more likely to have received a subprime loan than similarly situated White males. Upper-income Black women were more often targeted for high-cost loans than lower-income women of color. As a result, the subprime mortgage crisis has precipitated an enormous loss of home equity and wealth among African-Americans that will affect generations to come.     

Crisis in the Russian mortgage market through the lens of financial accelerator theory

This paper analyzes the influence of the economic crisis on the Russian mortgage market from the position of the financial accelerator theory. It shows that the level of financial stability of banks and borrowers on the eve of the crisis was determining the dynamics of their development and solvency during the crisis. The “flight to quality” effect, which is inextricably connected to the financial accelerator mechanism, showed that the largest domestic banks and credit organizations that were controlled by nonresident companies and mainly specialized in mortgages were in the most advantageous position in the mortgage market. In regions, this effect manifested itself through a reduction in mortgage lending for borrowers registered in other regions and an increase in the number of credit provided by Moscow banks.     

Contagion and risk premia in the amplification of crisis: Evidence from Asian names in the global CDS market

In the turmoil of 2007–2009, troubles in a small segment of the US mortgage market escalated into a crisis of global proportions. A striking feature of the crisis is the contagion that hit Asia. In a region where direct exposures to problem mortgages were minimal, credit spreads for major borrowers widened even more than they did in Europe and the United States. We argue that the contagion was part of an amplification mechanism driven by valuation losses caused by the bursting of a global credit bubble. The valuation losses stemmed not so much from a reassessment of credit risks as from a global repricing of these risks. It was this repricing that was the main channel for contagion into Asian credit (and equity) markets. For empirical evidence, we analyze fluctuations in credit default swap (CDS) spreads and expected default frequencies (EDFs) for major Asian borrowers. We find that valuation losses on CDS contracts for these Asian borrowers arose in part from movements in global and region-specific risk pricing factors as well as from revisions to expected losses from defaults.     

Notes and Communications

Summary The relationship between home ownership of Dutch elderly households and age is strongly negative. Other studies suggest that this age gradient should be attributed to a cohort effect. In this paper, we investigate where those cohort effects come from. We also observe that mortgage ownership among elderly home owners increased considerably during the nineties. Using panel data, we estimate models explaining home and mortgage ownership by age, cohort, and time effects, as well as other factors. Cohort and time effects are modelled explicitly using macro economic and housing market related variables. We find that the level of GDP per capita when the household head was young is the main factor explaining generation effects in home ownership among the elderly. After accounting for cohort effects it also appears that home ownership decreases slightly with age. Mortgage ownership among elderly home owners rose considerably during the nineties due to house price increases and due to financial innovation in the mortgage market. Cohort effects are also important. A supplementary analysis suggests that those cohort effects are due to the fact that the accidental bequest motive is becoming less important. We thank Maarten van Rooij, Konstantinos Tatsiramos, Casper van Ewijk, Wouter Vermeulen, Frederic Vermeulen, Frank de Jong and Marcel Lever for their useful comments     

De vraag Naar Hypothecair krediet en de Rentevorming of de Hypotheekmarkt

Summary This paper presents an econometric model for the Dutch mortgage market. It comprises demand equations for housing and other mortgages, estimated over the period 1965II–1974I, a mortgage rate equation and a set of equations describing the allocation of mortgage credit over four categories of financial institutions. For the demand for mortgages on houses we found a long-term interest elasticity of –1.14 and for the demand for other mortgages one of – 0.58. Mortgage rate differentials seem to influence the distribution of mortgages over the financial institutions. However, the main determinant is the share of new deposits going to commercial banks.

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De schrijvers zijn verbonden aan de Nederlandsche Bank. Drs. Den Butter en drs. Dongelmans zijn medewerkers van de econometrische researchgroep. Dr. Fase is directie-assistent voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek en hoofd van deze groep. Gaarne betuigen we onze dank aan de heren mr. Th. A. Hoog en ir. N. Snijders, indertijd resp. voorzitter en bestuurslid van de Vereniging van Hypotheekbanken, voor hun bereidwilligheid met de beide laatstgenoemde auteurs van gedachten te wisselen over de structuur en werking van de hypotheekmarkt. De heer M. J. Broekhuisen was ons behulpzaam bij het bijeenbrengen van de gegevens en de uitvoering van de talloze berekeningen die tijdens het onderzoek zijn verricht. Een referee zijn we erkentelijk voor een aantal nuttige opmerkingen.     

Price‐Setting Behavior of Korean Firms†

This paper investigates a pattern of price revision by firms in Korea and sheds light on the cause of price stickiness by providing reliable statistical estimates for calibration of the parameters of the widely‐used macro‐models. Based on firm‐level survey data and using a probit model, we identify the firm characteristics or market conditions that discourage firms from carrying out state‐dependent price adjustment. We also estimate the factors driving firms to engage in state‐dependent adjustment rather than wait until the next scheduled revision under three different shocks: demand, general cost and exchange rate shocks. We find a few interesting features, as follows. First, price revision by Korean firms tends to be time‐dependent rather than state‐dependent, with a sizable dispersion across sectors and firm sizes. Second, the pattern of price revision in Korea is not significantly different from that in selected advanced economies. Third, the reason why firms favor time‐dependent price adjustments appears to be endogenous, accounted for by a number of market institution variables. Fourth, in response to shocks, Korean firms tend to wait until the next periodically scheduled revision rather than make a state‐dependent price adjustment, unless marginal costs are affected significantly by the shock, and state‐dependent revisions are often significantly delayed when they do occur.     

Evaluation of the Reverse Mortgage Option in Hong Kong

The reverse mortgage is a very useful financial product for senior citizens who own homes but do not have a cash income, while it is a high‐risk product from the lender's perspective. One of benefits of reverse mortgages is that the debt limit is restricted to the scope of the disposition price of the collateralized house, which is considered a put option to borrowers. The present study evaluates the option value of the reverse mortgage in Hong Kong through an empirical analysis using the Black–Scholes option‐pricing model. Moreover, the present study shows specific monetary values through option matching to the consumer situation, contributing to the increased understanding of reverse mortgages from the consumer's point of view.     

Loan Sales and Borrowers’ Accounting Conservatism

We examine whether initial loan sales in the secondary loan market relate to borrowing firms’ accounting conservatism. We find that borrowing firms exhibit a significant decline in accounting conservatism after the initial loan sales. We show that the decline in borrower conservatism is more pronounced for firms that borrow from lenders with lower monitoring incentives and for firms that have lower incentives to supply conservatism. The baseline results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests. Collectively, we provide corroborative evidence that lead lenders’ monitoring incentives enforce accounting conservatism in the private debt market, and that lead lenders play a more prominent role than secondary loan market participants in shaping corporate (conservative) reporting.     

Elasticity of Demand and Optimal Prize Distribution for Instant Lottery Games

This study explores the optimal payout structure and prize distribution of instant (scratch-off) lottery games. Using ticket sales data for 185 instant lottery games sold between 2007 and 2011 by the Maryland State Lottery and Gaming Control Agency, we calculate the price elasticity of demand across a range of ticket denominations. Our findings suggest that increasing the payout rate of instant tickets will increase revenue, particularly among low denomination tickets. We also find that reallocating the current prize distributions within a game towards fewer, but more valuable, low-tier prizes will increase the number of tickets sold.     

Short-term residential mortgage contracts in American economic history

Short-term contracts were a staple of the American residential mortgage market until the Great Depression, after which policymakers pushed for longer terms in order to eliminate refinancing risk. Using a first-of-its-kind data set on mortgages outstanding in 1930, this paper suggests that short-term contracts had remained popular until the Depression because of their appeal to a class of well-off sophisticated borrowers who were undeterred by refinancing risk, and who valued flexible amortization. In contrast, typical wage earners preferred longer terms in order to eliminate refinancing risk, even as they took on the burden of regular amortization payments.     

Policy responses to an overheated housing market: Credit tightening versus transaction taxes

Among Asian economies, Hong Kong has experienced the highest real growth in house prices since the 2010s. Two macroprudential measures, namely credit tightening (loan-to-value ratio cap) and transaction taxes (stamp duty), were introduced to cool down the overheated housing market. This study examines and compares their effectiveness based on a set of constant-quality house price indices. Through an error correction model, we find that credit tightening was able to curb house price growth in the high-price segment, while transaction taxes could not. An explanation is that the exemptions from transaction taxes for those with genuine housing needs could be abused by other market participants. It is easier for buyers to exploit the exemptions to get around the stamp duty than to manipulate the property valuation for mortgage lending. The implication is that the effectiveness of macroprudential measures hinges on whether compliance or exemption can be easily monitored and enforced.     

Misallocation and price distortions: A revenue decomposition of medical service providers in China

The provision of healthcare services and the distribution of medial resources across the China health system hierarchy is characterized by an inverted pyramid with alarming congestions in the so-called AAA tertiary hospitals. This study tries to investigate this baseline misallocation issue prior to the introduction of the new healthcare reforms in 2009. Building upon established framework, we developed an alternative measure for dispersion of factor price distortions. Using a large national microdata, the results obtained are consistent with previous studies in that for a less developed geographical market, often characterized by poorer factor mobility and weaker market competition, dispersion of the factor price distortions is high, reflecting high degree of misallocation. We also developed a decomposition of revenue dispersion to make inferences about the major channels through which the inverted pyramid arises. The analysis reveals the extent to which, the disproportionately large share of revenues generated by high-tier tertiary hospitals in China, can be attributed to their high productivity and the public trusts in them as providers of quality care.     

RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY PRICES IN A SUBMARKET OF SOUTH AFRICA: SEPARATING REAL RETURNS FROM ATTRIBUTE GROWTH

The South African residential housing market experienced high growth in the previous decade, in line with international trends. Traditional methods of documenting this trajectory use the average prices of only properties that are sold in given periods and regions. A critical assumption of these approaches is that houses remain homogenous across time and space. This paper constructs a micro‐level hedonic price index to account for changing attributes of heterogenous houses. It illustrates that returns may have been overstated, and that much of the growth recorded in this market is driven by attribute inflation, particularly in the high price segment.