Saturday, July 18, 2015

It's the ARMS, stupid

Aleablog cites the Fed:

http://www.aleablog.com/?p=329

Prime mortgages are doing fine; fixed-rate subprime mortgages are doing fine. ARMS with rate resets are not. Many 2/28 and 3/27 ARMs, that started with low teaser rates, have prepayment penalties, meaning borrowers can't get themselves out of trouble by refinancing into a FRM. Prepayment penalities are, in principle, fine--they allow borrowers to get mortgages with lower coupon rates. But in current practice, they may be a leading source of a lot of problems in the next few years...

No comments:

Post a Comment