Mortgage Refinancing

A step-by-step procedure for evaluating mortgage refinancing is illustrated. The method is also used to show the effects of changes in marginal tax rates, opportunity discount rates, mortgage rates, and the age of the mortgage on the decision to refinance.     

The Home Purchase Sentiment Index: A New Housing Indicator

We built a home purchase sentiment index (HPSI) with consumers’ responses to questions about home buying and selling conditions, income gains and job concerns, and house price and mortgage rate expectations. The HPSI can help forecast mortgage originations and house prices, sales, and starts. Forecasting horse races during 2012–14 show the HPSI handily outperformed other sentiment indices. We show differences in the HPSI by income and by age groups. We also suggest other aspects of housing where survey-based indicators may help, such as demand by millennials or seniors, home owners’ moving, renters’ intentions, and mortgage refinancing, delinquency, or default rates.     

Does Prepayment Risk of Mortgages Affect Excess Returns of Bank Stocks?

This paper explores the relationship between the prepayment risk embedded in conventional, fixed-rate residential mortgages and excess returns for bank stocks. There are two interesting findings in this study. First, commercial banks traded in the Nasdaq market are more meanvariance efficient than the other seven groups of industrial stocks. Second, the prepayment risk factor is significant for these banks. The prepayment risk mainly reflects a call option embedded in a mortgage plus foreclosure costs associated with a mortgage put option. This risk is measured by a remaining part of mortgage rates after excluding the influence of real estate market, maturity, and default risks on mortgage rates. The results of this study suggest that the prepayment risk factor does significantly affect excess returns for bank stocks in the period with high levels of mortgage refinancing activities. JEL Classification G210     

INTENSITY-BASED VALUATION OF RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGES: AN ANALYTICALLY TRACTABLE MODEL

This paper presents an analytically tractable valuation model for residential mortgages. The random mortgage prepayment time is assumed to have an intensity process of the form h _t = h ₀( t ) +γ ( k − r _t )⁺ , where h ₀( t ) is a deterministic function of time, r _t is the short rate, and γ and k are scalar parameters. The first term models exogenous prepayment independent of interest rates (e.g., a multiple of the PSA prepayment function). The second term models refinancing due to declining interest rates and is proportional to the positive part of the distance between a constant threshold level and the current short rate. When the short rate follows a CIR diffusion, we are able to solve the model analytically and find explicit expressions for the present value of the mortgage contract, its principal-only and interest-only parts, as well as their deltas. Mortgage rates at origination are found by solving a non-linear equation. Our solution method is based on explicitly constructing an eigenfunction expansion of the pricing semigroup, a Feynman-Kac semigroup of the CIR diffusion killed at an additive functional that is a linear combination of the integral of the CIR process and an area below a constant threshold and above the process sample path (the so-called area functional). A sensitivity analysis of the term structure of mortgage rates and calibration of the model to market data are presented.     

The use of term structure information in the hedging of mortgage‐backed securities

This article examines the importance of term structure variables in the hedging of mortgage‐backed securities (MBS) with Treasury futures. Koutmos, G., Kroner, K., and Pericli, A. (1998) find that the optimal hedge ratio is time varying; we determine the effect of yield levels and slopes on this variation. As these variables are closely tied with mortgage refinancing, intuition suggests them to be relevant determinants of the hedge ratio. It was found that a properly specified model of the time varying hedge ratio that excludes the level and slope of the yield curve from the information set would provide similar out‐of‐sample hedging results to a model in which term structure information is included. Thus, both the level of interest rates and the slope of the yield curve are unimportant variables in determining the empirically optimal hedge ratio between MBS and Treasury futures contracts. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:661–678, 2005     

INDIFFERENCE VALUATION OF MORTGAGE‐BACKED SECURITIES IN THE PRESENCE OF PREPAYMENT RISK

We present a utility‐based methodology for the valuation and the risk management of mortgage‐backed securities subject to totally unpredictable prepayment risk. Incompleteness stems from its embedded prepayment option which affects the security's cash flow pattern. The prepayment time is constructed via deterministic or stochastic hazard rate. The relevant indifference price consists of a linear term, corresponding to the remaining outstanding balance, and a nonlinear one that incorporates the investor's risk aversion and the interest payments generated by the mortgage contract. The indifference valuation approach is also extended to the case of homogeneous mortgage pools.     

Housing Activity and Consumer Spending

The current expansion has seen record-high levels of transactions in housing, extraordinary growth in the aggregate value of owner-occupied housing, and large increases in the amount of funds realized from the refinancing of mortgage debt. Many analysts thus have pointed to the strong housing market and rising home prices as a major pillar supporting recent economic growth and have expressed concern that a contraction in housing activity and values could pose a significant risk to consumer spending and real economic growth. This paper explores the channels by which the housing market may affect consumer spending and assesses the potential risk from a softening in the housing market. Our assessment is that while a housing slowdown by itself may slow consumer spending some, it is probably insufficient to precipitate a downturn without some additional shocks outside of the sector. JEL Classification E21,R21     

科技型企业股权方式对企业业绩影响的实证分析

通过对科技型企业股权再融资后企业的短期市场反应和长期业绩变化,研究科技型企业股权再融资方式对企业业绩的影响,发现科技型企业进行股权再融资后企业业绩是上升的。可见,股权融资方式有利于科技型企业融通资金,调整融资结构,有利于企业的发展,不存在“困钱”动机。     

Consumer Reactions to Variable Rate Mortgages

This paper reports on a study which explored consumers' reaction to the variable rate mortgage, which represents an innovation in residential mortgages in the United States. The sample consisted of California home buyers who had obtained either a variable rate mortgage (VRM) or a fixed rate mortgage (FRM). The results suggest that lenders have not discriminated against minority or lower-income people in granting VRMs. VRM users were more knowledgeable about and favorable toward VRMs than were FRM users. VRM users were, however, less satisfied with their mortgages and less inclined to prefer the same type of mortgage for a future home purchase than were FRM users.     

Wages, inflation, and mortgage design

By virtue of creating asset-liability mismatch, conventional long-term, fixed-rate mortgage loans inherently introduce excess interest risk to the financial systems. Considering that inflation is in part the reason for this excess interest risk, it seems natural to redesign mortgages in such a way that over time mortgage payments could, at least in part, reflect inflation. In this paper, I show that by allowing payments to adjust to inflation, particularly that of wages, by incorporating a prespecified growth rate into mortgage payments, mortgage loans become more affordable while bank interest spreads become less volatile, making the banking system less unstable.     

Shopping for a home vs. a loan: the role of cognitive resource depletion

The authors suggest that the process of shopping for a home and choosing between alternative property features depletes individuals’ cognitive resources, which in turn results in sub‐optimal home financing decisions. Thus, in the span of time that follows the shopping experience, consumers will devote less attention to choosing a mortgage, resulting in a higher propensity to select higher‐risk, adjustable‐rate mortgage products. The results of two controlled experiments demonstrate that participants in an online house shopping simulation were more likely to select one of the high‐risk mortgage offers, and spent less time selecting a mortgage than participants in the control condition. In addition, contrary to expectations, warning participants about cognitive resource depletion exacerbated these effects. These findings imply that consumer decisions could be improved by imposing a temporal separation between shopping for a home and shopping for financing.     

Protecting Minority Homeowners: Race,Foreclosure Counseling and Mortgage Modifications

Millions of minority homeowners are at risk of losing their homes as a result of the housing crisis due to mortgage foreclosure and home repossession. One consumer‐oriented policy response to this crisis is mortgage default counseling for borrowers. This study examines the rate at which minority borrowers seek default counseling and the resulting correlation between counseling and the probability that a borrower obtains a modification of his/her original mortgage contract terms. The results suggest that African Americans are more likely to be counseled, relative to Whites. However, Latinos or other non‐White groups are no more or less likely to be counseled. The probability of loan modifications among counseled African Americans is also higher than other counseled borrowers. These results suggest that counseling policies and the public subsidy of default counseling may be one approach for promoting consumer financial well‐being of these households, but also suggest counseling efforts might be better designed for other minority groups. These results also have implications for the application of counseling to other mortgage decisions, such as refinance .     

随机利率下住房反向抵押贷款的定价与应用

文章基于考虑老年人对养老金的需求不断增大,以及养老保障应具备抵御通货膨胀的能力等事实,运用精算法对传统的住房反向抵押贷款的定价模型进行了推广和改进,建立了联合随机利率下包含房价变动和房产折旧等影响因素的终身给付的住房反向抵押贷款定价模型,给出了多种支付方式下的定价公式及其近似公式,并通过一组实例验证了模型的正确性和合理性,为贷款机构制定住房反向抵押贷款价格提供了一定的依据。     

Factors Affecting Borrower Choice Between Fixed and Adjustable Rate Mortgages

For this study, data were collected from 352 mortgage borrowers to determine whether mortgage decisions are economically rational with regard to the type of mortgage believed to have the higher expected cost, and how various factors affect mortgage choice. For many borrowers, the type of mortgage with actual higher expected cost (based on interest rates and residency expectations) is not the type of mortgage thought to have the higher expected cost. The financial planning aspect of a mortgage choice and the risk factor have a significant influence on this choice, whereas lender constraints and the financial cost aspect do not. These findings suggest that consumer education programs focusing on mortgage choice are needed.     

The determinants of households’ repayment difficulties on mortgage loans: evidence from Italian microdata

This article investigates the main determinants of households’ repayment difficulties on mortgage loans in Italy. We contribute to the empirical literature on household financial vulnerability by assessing the joint impact of socio‐demographic factors, loan characteristics and institutional variables on the likelihood of mortgage insolvency and on the intensity of arrears. Using data from the Italian component of the 2008 European Union‐Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU‐SILC) survey, we firstly identify which types of households are more vulnerable to unexpected adverse events that may trigger repayment difficulties. Specifically, households whose head is young, unemployed or immigrant show a higher probability of arrears and emerge as those suffering more from the adverse economic conditions connected to the crisis. Moreover, household repayment behaviour is affected by mortgage characteristics and, in particular, having modified contract terms significantly increases current arrears probability. Finally, regional institutional and credit market factors mainly impact on the conditional intensity of arrears. This evidence suggests that, although repayment difficulties mainly arise from a genuine inability to repay, households are less likely to pay on time when institutions are less effective at punishing default, confirming the existence of some strategic behaviour.     

The value of mortgage prepayment and default options

We use an implicit alternating direction numerical procedure to estimate the value of a fixed‐rate mortgage (FRM) with embedded default and prepayment options. The value of FRMs depends on interest rates, the house value, and mortgage maturity. Our numerical results suggest that the joint option value of prepayment and default is considerably high, even at loan origination. We extend the model to include prepayment penalties in FRM valuation. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:840–861, 2009     

农村宅基地抵押试点的法律观察

现行农民宅基地使用权抵押试点分别以财产流转性收益和农村金融市场扩展为抵押主题,采取农民房屋所有权并附属宅基地使用权抵押和宅基地使用权直接抵押两种模式及多种类型。试点宅基地使用权抵押融资存在抵押权合法性、抵押物处置效力的法律风险。宅基地使用权抵押应遵循合法性途径,完善抵押登记制度,宅基地使用权转让应市场化运作,其受让后的宅基地使用权期限可界定为30年为宜。     

Wie stark und schnell wurden die Niedrigzinsen an Bankkunden weitergereicht?

In this paper it is shown that the ECB’s main refinancing rate, measured by various Taylor-rules, has for the past decade been far too low for Germany. That entails risks for the stability of Germany’s financial system. How strong these risks materialise depends on the extent to which German banks pass on the low policy rates to their customers. In this paper, the interest rate pass-through in Germany in the low interest era is investigated using error-correction models for various bank interest rates. The results indicate a stronger short-term pass-through as well as diminished interest rate margins that weigh on banks’ profits. However, there is no evidence for structural changes in the long-term relationship between policy rates and banks’ interest rates. While the latter might be soothing for monetary policy makers, the former is rather a reason for concern.     

Should the IMF resort to private credit markets for refinancing?

The International Monetary Fund is at present examining the possibility of borrowing on private capital markets in order to meet its growing refinancing needs. Reservations concerning such a step have been voiced in particular by the oil-importing developing countries. Professor Konrad analyses the pros and cons.     

个人住房抵押贷款的借款人风险分析

个人住房抵押贷款已逐渐成为个人买房的必由选择。对银行和借款人而言,住房消费贷款的长期风险都较高。本文对个人住房贷款中,借款人的潜在风险进行了深入分析,并联系当前实际提出相应的控制、防范风险的措施。