Obama's Mortgage Aid Plan Will Pay Homeowners To Pay Their Mortgage

The latest mortgage aid plan proposed by the Obama administration seeks to encourage underwater homeowners to keep making mortgage payments by paying down a portion of their principal. This could prevent many homeowners from walking away from their mortgages when they owe much more than what their home is currently worth. The following article from Blown Mortgage, explains more details of the plan.

Home mortgage aid plans are hard to design. Because of how the ideologies behind open market and social responsibility are polarized no matter what you do with a mortgage aid plan pretty much half the nation is going to disagree with you.

Obama’s new mortgage plan is not perfect, not even his closest aides will say that. Its strongest opponents will point out that the new mortgage plan does not really cover for homes that have seriously dropped in value in the last months/years. Most of the families in trouble live in homes that have lost serious value, so there is a question mark in how effective this mortgage modification plan is going to be.

However the new plan has managed to incentivize the payment of mortgages and their previous modification so that it is worthwhile for banks and borrowers. This might not be enough to tip the scales on the millions of households that are at risk of losing their home this year but then again, it might.

If anything does help to tip the scales on the current crisis is to make it attractive for homeowners to pay their mortgage as well as reducing it’s principal and making it affordable on a monthly basis. Let’s face it, if your home is under water (it is worth less than what you owe on it) and there is no prospect of prices going up and you are struggling to pay the mortgage you might be inclined to cut your losses, give up and let the home go. Of course if someone is willing to give you some extra incentive to pay your mortgage and make it affordable, you might just give it a try.

What incentives does the Obama Mortgage Plan offer?
There are two main benefits or incentives homeowners that are in the red can take advantage of.

1. Once their mortgage has been modified and monthly payments begin the Treasury will pay an incentive for every mortgage payment a borrower pays on time that goes to pay the principal balance of the loan(The cash you actually borrowed, not the interest). This is interesting because it will help reduce the length of the loan and the amount of interest paid on it. Over a five year period this “incentive” could help reduce the principal on the loan by $5,000. Reducing the principal of the mortgage has of course even greater repercussions as years go by. If you have a 15 year mortgage and you reduce your principal by $5,000 in the first five years you will be actually saving yourself over $3,000 in interest by the end of your mortgage.

2.There is a trial period of three months before any modification is permanent. During those three months the homeowner must pay his mortgage on time. If he does he gets $1,000 from the government every year for next three years. If the mortgage isn’t paid on time there is no deal.

These are not huge benefits but they are something and they might just help people start thinking in a different way and help people dig themselves out of financial trouble.

This article has been republished from Blown Mortgage.

How Obama's Stimulus Plan Could Cause A Deeper Recession

Interest rates have been on the rise and Obama's Stimulus Plan that has increased the government deficit may be the culprit. According to Reuters "The U.S. Treasury must sell a record net $2 trillion in new debt in 2009 to fund a $1.8 trillion projected fiscal deficit, resulting from falling tax revenues, an economic stimulus package and sundry bank bailouts." Martin Hutchinson from Money Morning argues why increasing interest rates can be very bad news for the economy.

Could the massive Obama stimulus plan end up hurting the U.S. economy?

It’s long been a worry, and now it’s beginning to seem possible.

The latest housing reports suggest that the recent rapid run-up in 10-year Treasury bond yields may be having an unhealthy effect on the U.S. housing market. That tells me that - although home prices are back to their long-term average in terms of earnings - we may not yet be close to the price bottom.

If that’s true, it’s very bad news. A further substantial decline in housing prices would destabilize the U.S. banking system again, because of all the mortgage debt in it, which would cause a very nasty “second leg” economic downturn. That would have one very ironic further implication: U.S. President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package - intended to help the U.S. economy push back the recession - would instead have succeeded in pushing it deeper into the mire.

A month ago, it appeared that the housing market might be in the process of bottoming out. The ratio of house prices to average incomes - which peaked at about 4.5 to 1 in 2006 - had fallen 33% from that apex, which brought the ratio close to its long-term average of 3.2 to 1, according to an S&P/Case-Shiller Index report. While interest rates remained low and government-backed home financing was readily available, it appeared the forces pushing up house prices (low interest rates and accessible financing) might soon come into balance and then dominate the forces that push home prices down (an inventory overage).

The jump in interest rates - from 2.07% on the 10-year Treasury bond in December to around 3.65% today - has weakened the case for a stabilization of housing prices. Mortgage rates, which were far below their levels of the last 30 years, have moved back above 5% — even for “conforming” mortgages. Thus the Mortgage Bankers Association index of new mortgage applications was down 15% in the latest week. Meanwhile, new home sales have merely stabilized at very low levels of an annual rate around 350,000 - compared to more than 2.0 million at the peak of the market, while the latest price statistics suggest that price declines continued to be quite rapid in March, and possibly even accelerated slightly.

This interest-rate increase does not currently seem to be caused by expectations of inflation, which has remained around 2% annually, although oil, gold and other commodity prices have ticked up. Instead, it seems to have been caused by the exceptionally high demands being made on the government bond market by the U.S. federal deficit, which is expected to total about 13% of gross domestic product (GDP), or more than $1.8 trillion, this year.

It’s not surprising that such a blip should have occurred this month; federal tax receipts are at their peak in April, as companies and individuals pay their taxes due, so the beginning of May saw a resumption of mammoth U.S. Treasury funding needs after a month’s pause.

If interest rates continue to increase, the effect on the already-weak housing market could be severe, as housing “affordability” would be reduced in a period in which prices were declining and unemployment was rising. That, in turn, could have a self-reinforcing downward effect on prices, as home inventories bloat further, and buyers hold back.

Currently, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city house price index, prices are down 32% from their peak, but remain 40% above 2000 levels, while consumer prices are only 24% above those of 2000. However, 2000 was not a “bear-market” year; prices had already enjoyed several years of rapid recovery from their early-1990s low. Should rising interest rates cause prices to continue falling to 2000’s level (another 28% decline), then on average every 80% mortgage undertaken since May 2002 (when the index first went above 125% of 2000’s level) would be underwater, having an owed principal amount that exceeds the actual current market value of the house. That would cause a surge in mortgage defaults more severe than any yet seen, extending far into the prime mortgage category - and probably causing the U.S. banking system to implode once again.

The stimulus-package funds, which began flowing in April, may actually induce some GDP growth this quarter. At the very least, the Obama administration infusion should hold the economy to a very minimal decline in GDP.

However, if interest rates keep rising, the effect of further housing-sector weakness and the wobbling banking system would overwhelm any stimulus benefits, and would cause a second “dip” in this recession - one that’s far worse than the first. The stimulus would, in that event, have proved counterproductive, killing the very economic recovery it was supposed to have stimulated.

Rising interest rates will have adverse effects on all countries with large budget deficits, the most notable of which are Britain and Japan. The effects would be harsh enough to actually prevent those countries from recovering from their own recessions.

For investors, the remedy is clear: Look to invest in countries that have produced only modest stimulus packages, and whose budget deficits are currently the smallest. In the invaluable statistical section of The Economist, a number of countries are projected to have budget deficits of less than 3% of GDP in 2009, in spite of their recessions.

At that level, deficits are easy to finance, and do not force up interest rates, so economic recovery should be relatively rapid.

Let’s take a look at some of those countries in question:

Canada:
Budget deficit forecast of 2.5% of GDP. Americans are fond of sneering at Canada for its high public spending and sluggish growth. Well, Canada’s public spending as a percentage of GDP peaked in the early 1990s and since 2000 the country has run budget surpluses. In 2009, Canada is forecast to have public spending lower than the United States, when provinces and states are taken into account, and to continue lower than its arch rival (the United States) for the foreseeable future. I wrote a few weeks ago about investment opportunities in the Canadian energy sector; those opportunities are even more compelling with the continued rise in the oil price to current prices of more than $62 a barrel.

Denmark Finland and Switzerland
Wealthy European countries with healthy budget positions - deficits of 2.5%, 2.6% and 2.0% of GDP, respectively - will recover more quickly than their neighbors, because they have kept their economies in balance.
Brazil
Probably the best of the lot, with a projected budget deficit of only 2% of GDP, inflation of 4.4% and bond yields of 11.8% — meaning it can indulge in a little monetary expansion if it needs to. Brazil will also benefit if inflation returns (as I expect it to), because that will push up the prices of its commodities exports.

So there you have it. Maybe the U.S. bond market and housing market will stabilize, and the American economic recovery will proceed smoothly - nothing is certain. But investments in Canada and Brazil, in particular, will protect you against the possibility that the U.S. situation doesn’t improve.

This article has been reposted from Money Morning. You can view the article on Money Morning's investment news website here.