Irish Mortgage Brokers Blog

If you go into arrears on your mortgage or you talk to your lender because you believe you are a ‘pre-arrears’ candidate then you will be asked to fill in a ‘Standard Financial Statement‘ or SFS which is part of the Mortgage Arrears Resolution Process (MARP) which started last year.

Engaging with the lender is a key tenet of this and filling in the SFS and liaising with the lender on aspects of it. The information in this is what will be used to negotiate the repayment that you will pay in cases where lifestyle adjustment does not allow you to make the full payment.

We have made a few more bold predictions in our ‘Mortgage Market Trend Outlook 2012′ and reviewed how wrong many of our 2011 forecasts were as well.

Some of the main points thus far are:

1. That mortgage lending bottomed out in 2011.
2. That IBRC may take on some tracker loan portfolios to de-risk state owned banks (as the state already owns these loans entirely anyway).
3. That rates for existing AIB borrowers will have to go up but that for new borrowers rates may come down with changes to how prices are charged depending on risk of the proposed loan.
4. That deposit rates will start to drop.
5. That up to 25,000 mortgages will be deemed ‘unsustainable’ and that the ‘won’t pay’ contingent of arrears cases may be as high as 1 in 5.

We hope you enjoy this report, we in turn hope that we get some of the calls right!

Many thanks,

Irish Mortgage Brokers

I hope you enjoyed the first round of economic history from 2008 to 2011, I think it is time for round 2.

Alan Greenspan was on CNBC last week and his interview is a very interesting take on Europe - which happens to be the first thing he looks at every day (European Bond Markets). Meanwhile Lloyds are reporting that the risk of a 2nd recession in the UK are higher at c. 25-30%.

Greece is the crisis that just keeps giving, The Telegraph has the usual Eurosceptic line but it isn’t about being smug any more. The Greek referendum call of recent days came out of left field and while it may never actually occur the political optics show that the Aegean issues are far from solved, along with the replacement of military officials (the interpretation being the fear of a coup).

And German joblessness is higher for the first time in 2 years, standing now at 7%. The rate of inflation in Germany is currently 2.6% (HICP at 2.86%), having remained over 2% since January 2011. The issue with that (and unemployment that wasn’t growing) is that it lead to a ‘Goldilocks delusion’ where not cutting rates and fiscally conservative policy was considered best. It seems now that Germany has not decoupled from the rest of Europe.

Growing resentment about profligate EU members along with some fear inducing inflation as well as rising unemployment make for a very grumpy Germany, it does not bide well for negotiations. Perhaps hindsight will equally not bide well for the Germany that handled the Great Recession so well (from an employment perspective) either?

Of course at home here in Ireland we are about to pay €700,000,000.00 to speculative/junk rated bond holders who in any normal circumstances would be jumping for joy at a 50% haircut. Politicians are walking out of the Dail due to the lack of discussion, and bingo halls being raided by cops [irrelevant but a sign of the times!].

The Central Bank of Italy (Banca d’Italia) €-Coin ‘one figure for all European GDP’ statistic is also showing a sharp down-trend at present, negative for the first time since September 2009. Italy, with the worlds 3rd largest debtor at €1.9 trillion Euro, and winner of ’scary chart of the day’ almost every day regarding their bond spreads v.s Germany.

I don’t know of any model that can capture and create metrics out of the information flying around at present. There are interesting twitter based investment tools that use crowd sourced information to imply the trajectory of the markets, but I’m not privy to being under the hood on those.

What I am trying to say is that all of this news doesn’t paint a pretty vista, and in this analysts opinion the October/November 2011 period will be another big turning point or cusp. I last made a call like this in January of 2008 (and while it seemed grim at the time it was understated in retrospect), and during that time I went entirely to cash and advised all of our private clients to do the same until late 08′ early 09′.

Today I am repeating that call - to stay out of the markets for a while and see what comes of this all. You might miss out on the Spring 09′ moment, but you won’t face the burn on the road that gets you there. The news flow is simply too negative at present for confidence to go any other way than down, capital preservation remains key.

Until Central Banks step up to the plate (and it our long held belief that they must and will -they are already our lifeline) with the multi-trillion multi-lateral approach there is no reason to do anything other than earn interest.

We were happy to comment on the Keane report in this news piece by Martina Fitzgerald in RTE

I put on my thinking caps last week and drafted a paper called ‘Designing a Debt Relief programme with minimal moral hazard to address the Irish household debt overhang‘.

We were every happy with the write up it got in the Sunday Independent via Carol Hunt.

There is far too much talk of ‘moral hazard’ in the public debate to date, instead we should be also considering ’separating equilibrium’ (which is kind of the opposite of moral hazard - it’s the ‘pain’ that comes with moral hazard ‘gain’).

To do this you have to create a programme which works within some of the parameters of the existing laws (new legislation must still take account of what exists before it), look at the operational aspects of the scheme (how it functions in real life), design a general algorithm of the process and most importantly have an ‘incentive alignment’ which means that neither party voluntarily makes an action to the intentional detriment of the other.

So I failed if you take every metric together, but what does come out of this is that you could have a somewhat prescriptive debt solution that works rapidly, uses established methods and that is fair to both bank and borrower.

The statement that we ‘can’t afford the cost’ is a legitimized fallacy, one that if you repeat it often enough becomes true. Contrary to that is the fact that loans that cannot be repaid will not be repaid - if you accept that then there is a cost, the question is whose lap does it land in? The banks via writedown/writeoff or the taxpayer via additional welfare costs?

An easier way to think about this is as follows: A cost is a cost, and the question is really about who bears it rather than whether it exists or not. This is just another example of the banking system hoping to offset their costs on other parties, it is the ultimate rent-seeking behaviour.

I am hopeful that a few people will read this and critique the heck out of it (please critique here or post a link to where we can find the critique), because this is HOW the subject advances, to date it has all been on subjective stances as to what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. On the cost front we used a simple comparative cost rather than a macro-economic one.

If nothing else, this paper will cure insomnia!

When a bank creates a loan that becomes an asset, the property it is secured upon is the collateral (sorry my teaming millions, I know I repeat this eternally). So if NAMA decide to become a brand of lender this October as we saw from an article in today’s Independent; then how does it work? Where does the money come from?

Take a property that they are putting up for sale (1st picture: pic not related). We’ll say for the sake of this example that it is worth €200,000.

The NAMA position may be that they paid more or less for this particular property but it doesn’t really matter; what does matter is that for the sake of them selling it the property may as well be unencumbered, there is no lien above that held by the NAMA.

This means they can give a title deed to the buyer when they sell it - but don’t forget, when a person takes out a mortgage there are two sales/purchases, the individual buys from the vendor (1st sale/purchase) then they sell it to the bank in exchange for the money [we call the 'mortgage] to complete the transaction (2nd sale/purchase) and the bank then take the ‘1st lien’ or ‘right’ on the property.

Prior to this they put in their deposit (10% or €20,000) which becomes their own, this is their ‘equity’, which is why ‘negative equity’ is described not as value versus the market (that’s called ‘price’), rather value versus the mortgage secured on the property.

What NAMA have indicated is that they will provide a kind of ‘bridging finance’ for buyers, so a certain portion will be made up of Bank borrowing, just a regular mortgage (we’ll speculate that it will be 60%).

This has a key advantage for the bank who will have 1st lien (because NAMA have said that there is some loss sharing mechanism which would indicate that at best they hope for 2nd lien). First of all they have a low loan to value (LTV) mortgage - considered lower risk because before the property gets into negative equity from the banks perspective (60% of 200k is €120,000) the price would have to fall a further €80,000. Secondly it means that they can lend a little more freely because their risk in this instance is reduced, it doesn’t mean ‘lax standards’ but it shouldn’t be as stringent as the lunacy that prevails now where it is so difficult to obtain credit.

So working through the example: The buyer puts in €20,000 (10%), the bank forward €120,000 (60%) leaving €60,000 (30%) to cover.

Thus we have the NAMA input; but where does this money come from?

Quite simply it comes from nowhere.

How? Because the property is unencumbered so what NAMA do is draw up a loan agreement (that then becomes an asset) and they give you the keys, along with an agreement that (speculating) might say that if prices fall then after 5 years there is some kind of loss sharing mechanism.

This means that they go from a situation of having an empty apartment generating nothing into the following:

Buyers input: €20,000
Mortgage: €120,000
Loan written: €60,000

The first two give a cash input of €140,000 which can then be invested (we’ll assume they get 5% p.a.) and they also have a loan of €60,000 which is a future claim on earnings of the buyer (again, we’ll assume 5% interest rate).

If there is ‘loss sharing’ don’t forget, the buyers equity gets wiped out first so it is not a case that if values fall that NAMA are onto a loser, rather it is if they fall greater than 10% over the next 5 years, and that may well be likely but don’t forget, they have money in hand today which will generate profit elsewhere.

That 140k over 5yrs at 5% will give them €178,679 (compound interest being [M=P(1+i)n]), the 60k loan will bring in €16,567 in cash meaning that they have €60,000 at risk but €55,246 in cash-flow, and let us not forget that if prices did fall and fall that the €120,000 bank loan has no loss sharing and would put NAMA in a better position than if they held out and sold at a later date - but I see that as an Armageddon scenario.

If prices fell a further 20% (which could happen and was hinted at in the Central Bank paper ‘Scenarios for Irish House Prices‘) then NAMA only have €20,000 to worry about and depending on the loss sharing scheme put forward all they do is write down the value of their loan on that basis giving the following:

€120,000 underlying bank loan
€20,000 deposit (now wiped out as buyers equity goes first)
€200,000 - 20% = €160,000 so the €60k loan they advanced becomes a €40k loan from that day forward.

Not a bad deal (for them) all said.

Angela Keegan of MyHome.ie wrote an opinion piece in the Sunday Business Post yesterday which included some of our firms commentary:

Figures compiled by Karl Deeter at Irish Mortgage Brokers showed that the size of the average first-time buyer mortgage peaked in the first quarter of 2008, at €251,000.

At the moment, the average drawdown is €188,000. According to Deeter, the ‘average mortgage’ from 2008 on a 2.1 per cent tracker costs €1,076 per month. Current TRS is €80 per month, so the net cost is €996.With the new, bigger TRS in the Programme for Government, the TRS will now be €119, resulting in a monthly payment of €957, an extra saving of €39 per month.

Compare that to the new first-time buyers, who will miss out on TRS. If they take out a loan for €188,000 at 4.3 per cent variable, their cost per month is €1,023.With rates likely to push up over 5 per cent, irrespective of the ECB, Deeter believes that, by this time next year, the divergence between the two mortgages could be as much as €150 a month, even though the average loan in 2011 is a notably smaller amount.

Over the lifetime of a mortgage, the effect of not having TRS for an average first-time buyer will add up to tens of thousands of euro. On the other side, the plight of the boom-time buyers may not be quite as bad as thought. Of the €113 billion in total residential lending, €65 billion is in tracker mortgages.

An analysis of the introduction and drawdown of tracker mortgages by Deeter indicates that the majority of buyers during the boom secured trackers. This gives them a great advantage over first-time buyers in the current market, where only more expensive variable rate products are available.

Cutting one of the few benefits available to future buyers in order to improve the position of people who purchased during the boom is highly questionable. Why punish the prudent who wisely opted not to buy during the bubble?

Why remove the small tax advantage we have traditionally given people on their first home purchase, and transfer that advantage to those who have already bought? Why penalise the only group capable of kick-starting the property market?

A programme specifically aimed at helping distressed borrowers is laudable, but it has to be targeted. Scrapping TRS - contrary to what buyers and the market were expecting - is not the way to achieve it. (It is ironic that the proposed abolition of TRS comes only weeks after the Revenue Commissioners spent considerable public monies on creating a TRS online application for future users, as new TRS applications were not meant to end until 2013.)

We were really pleased to feature on TV3’s ‘Morning Show’ with Sybil and Martin (Brian was standing in for Martin) in a conversation about property prices and whether or not we have hit the bottom. Aoife Walsh from the Respond! Housing Agency was also there giving some great information and advice for borrowers in trouble.

While the issues and numbers are different, the idea of personal accounts for retirement are compelling, we have been a big fan of these for some time, check out the video and see what you think.