Central Bank findings on interest only mortgages

The Central Bank released some findings on interest only mortgages (below), we’ll follow up with some commentary and interpretation soon.

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The research analyses the loan characteristics, including loan performance, of mortgages originated on interest-only terms in Ireland.

The main findings of the research are:

While interest-only arrangements have been widely used as a means of temporary forbearance to deal with the current mortgage arrears crisis, mortgages were also originated on interest-only terms during the height of the boom. Between 2005 and 2008, interest-only mortgages were mainly issued to buy-to-let investors on tracker mortgages and at high loan-to-value ratios. Interest-only mortgages were more likely to be issued to buy-to-let borrowers in Dublin and for the purchase of apartments than standard mortgages. The arrears rates on these mortgages are higher than standard mortgages. A significant number of interest-only mortgages are due to revert to principal-and-interest repayments in the next 2 years. The resulting higher repayments for these borrowers could lead to an increase in mortgage arrears. 44 per cent of the buy-to-let interest only borrowers will …

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AIB Rate hike: where is it now and where is it going?

AIB have announced an increase in their Standard Variable Rates (SVR’s) as well as in their Loan to Value Standard Variables (LTV-SVR’s: which are tiered variables based upon your loan to value), effective from August 10th. Caroline Madden of the Irish Times and Charlie Weston from the Independent both carried the story today, this comes only days after Allied Irish Bank announced that they lost over €2,000,000,000 in the first half of 2010.

Their SVR now stands at 3.25% but where is it headed? For that it is important to look at several different factors, firstly, their cost to income ratio has gone from 48% in 2009 to 63% for 2010. That means that it is costing them €63 to turn over €100 in income, this is a 32% increase on last year in costs which is a bad indication.

There are a multitude of factors playing into this:

1. Guarantee/ELG costs: …

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Are 100% mortgages the problem? Is LTV a symptom or a cause?

An article in the Independent yesterday pointed toward 100% mortgages being a significant attributer to the bubble, I would wager it was a symptom rather than a cause, the IBA meanwhile has called for all mortgages to be made on a non-recourse basis.

The good thing is that people and organisations are trying to find a way to avoid a repeat of the property bubble, and they are not one off events as the UK can testify.  There are however, significant factors contributing to what happened.

1: lenders didn’t price risk, they didn’t even ‘price at all’: Banks have utterly failed to do the job they were designed to do, namely that of profitable intermediation, we had huge amounts of competition on lending, that drove down criteria requirements and also compressed margins, then along came trackers, these had low margin price promises – Bank of Scotland brought them into Ireland and have since left. I spoke with a Bank exec. yesterday and he …

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