HOUSE OF CARDS: Reforming America's Housing Finance ...

HOUSE OF CARDS: Reforming America's Housing Finance System

MARCH 2012

ISBN: 978-0-9836077-1-7

Editor: Satya Thallam Managing Editor: Jennifer D. Zambone Assistant Editors: Amy Fontinelle, Victoria Andrew Associate Editors: Emma Elliott, Jordana Starr, Tate Watkins Graphic Designer: Joanna Andreasson

CONTENTS

Foreword | Edward Glaeser

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Summaries

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Editor's Note | Satya Thallam

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Figure 1: Home-Price Index (1993?2011)--Seasonally Adjusted

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Figure 2: Average of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Debt Spreads Over 10-Year Treasury

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Reforming the U.S. Mortgage Market Through Private Market Incentives | Dwight M. Jaffee

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Table 1: The Performance of European Mortgage Markets Compared with the United States 24

Table 2: Troubled Mortgages in Western Europe and the United States

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Table 3: Government Mortgage Programs

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Table 4: 2009 Ratio of Covered Bonds to Residential Mortgages Outstanding

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Two Approaches to GSE Reform | Arnold Kling

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A New Housing Finance System for the United States | Peter J. Wallison

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Table 1: The Performance of European Mortgage Markets Compared with the United States 58

F igur e 1: Home-Price Index, 1890?2010

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Table 2: Outstanding Subprime and Alt-A Loans, 2008

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The Way Forward: U.S. Residential-Mortgage Finance in a Post-GSE World | Lawrence J. White 67

The Future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac | Michael Lea and Anthony B. Sanders

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Figure 1: GSE/Federal Home Loan Bank Debt Versus Case Shiller Index Since 1990

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Table 1: International Mortgage Product Mix: Comparison of Different Countries

and Their Mortgage Products

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Figure 2: Homeownership Rates in the United States, 1965?2012

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Do We Need the 30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage? | Michael Lea and Anthony B. Sanders

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Table 1: Mortgage Pricing

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Figure 1: House Prices and Mortgage Loan Balance on 30-Year FRM:

5 percent down payment with ?1/2 percent decline in house prices per month

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Figure 2: Mortgage Refinance Volume Versus Freddie Mac 30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage Rate 97

Table 2: International Mortgage Products

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Table 3: Troubled Mortgages: Western Europe and the United States

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About the Authors

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FOREWORD Edward Glaeser

In 2006, at the height of the housing bubble, prescient voices--such as Dwight M. Jaffee's and Peter J. Wallison's--warned of the dangers inherent in allowing privately managed, profit-seeking government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to operate with implicit government guarantees. In those heady years, both the GSEs and homeowners racked up big paper profits, and they could ignore those correct Cassandras. In the wake of a great housing crash and the financial collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, however, America's housing policies, particularly those related to the GSEs, must be rethought.

The past structure of the GSEs represented both a micro and a macro problem. The micro problem was specific to the incentives facing those entities. Whenever a private company that aims to make money operates with an implicit government guarantee, it will be able to borrow money at low rates unrelated to the risks that it takes. That structure practically guarantees excessive gambling.

The GSEs, borrowing at just a few basis points over Treasury rates, accumulated vast portfolios of retained mortgages and took on massive risks insuring trillions of dollars of mortgages. Their managers and shareholders stood to earn vast profits--as they did for many years--if their bets turned out well. If the bets turned sour, taxpayers would cover the losses. The hundreds of billions of dollars that ordinary Americans must pay now to cover the GSEs' losses is the unsurprising outcome of a misbegotten system.

But the GSEs are also symptomatic of a larger, macro problem in American housing policy: its fetish for subsidizing home-related borrowing. The implicit subsidy provided for the GSEs filtered down to home buyers and enabled them to borrow at artificially deflated rates. Accompanied by the borrowing subsidy created by the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction and rule changes that enabled home buyers to obtain a loan with just a minimal down payment, GSE policies subsidized leverage and encouraged Americans to borrow as much as possible to bet on the vicissitudes of the housing market. During the boom, all this home buying was lauded for creating an "ownership society." Now, it appears that these policies actually seem to have helped create a foreclosure society.

Homes do represent the primary form of wealth for many Americans, but that doesn't mean that subsidizing mortgage interest--either explicitly through the tax code or implicitly through the GSEs--encourages savings. Subsidizing borrowing actually encourages people to take money out of their houses by increasing the sizes of their loans. Lower down-payment requirements alleviate the need to save in order to buy a home.

Subsidizing home borrowing also distorts many other decisions. Not every American needs to be a homeowner. By subsidizing home borrowing, the government encourages Americans to invest too much in a single, volatile asset class. The government encourages Americans to buy and build larger homes, which makes little sense given that American homes are already extremely large by world standards and bigger homes typically mean more home energy use. Subsidizing home ownership also pushes people away from urban apartments, which are typically rentals, into suburban detached housing, which is typically owner-occupied.

While the problems of the existing system are obvious, the path forward is not. During the boom, the enemies of reform were able to marshal arguments--apparently compelling to many--about how the GSEs were necessary for housing markets to function. These arguments are still being put forward in defense of the GSEs.

Wall Street traders argue that GSE insurance is necessary to create a standardized, tradable product. Real estate industry advocates argue that without GSE subsidies, housing prices will drop still further and create more

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havoc for the American economy. And we should not forget that Congress's first response to the housing bust was to come up with a new housing subsidy--the Home Buyers' Tax Credit. The prevalence of arguments in favor of the status quo only increases the need for good reform proposals. But any such reform proposal must face two great questions. First, will the proposal--as planned--manage to protect American taxpayers and sustain a functioning housing market? Second, will the proposal end up working as planned? For example, some have called for simply privatizing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and getting them off the government's books. As planned, this strategy could enable the housing and securitization markets to function without government subsidies. However, one can reasonably ask whether the government will be able to avoid providing an implicit guarantee for these reprivatized entities. They were, after all, privatized before, and yet they certainly had an implicit guarantee. Indeed, one can plausibly argue that taxpayers would have been safer if Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had been entirely public institutions during the boom. In that case, they would have lacked the incentive to expand their business, taking on extra risks in order to make more profits. As we approach the future, we need to move intelligently away from the mistakes of the past and toward a safer system that does less to distort housing markets and more to protect taxpayers. It is quite reasonable to argue that sensible reforms will have at worst a minor impact on prices. Given the abundance of secondary markets for debt, such as credit-card debt, that operate perfectly well without public insurance entities, it is quite reasonable to argue that private insurers can also produce standardized, securitized mortgages while not raising the risk posed by a large mortgage insurer of being too big to fail. That is why the Mercatus Center's attempt to collect a series of good ideas for reform is enormously valuable. The proposals that follow provide a good basis for discussing the future of the GSEs and American housing finance.

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