Home Financing
The following are links to the analysis posts and assorted essays of Larry Roberts (Irvine Renter):
3-2-2010 -- Interest-Only Loans Join Option ARMs in Dustbin of Financial History -- The ongoing credit crunch witnesses the elimination of another dubious loan program.
3-1-2010 -- The Bernanke Put: The Implied Protection of Mortgage Interest Rates -- How will the Federal Reserve manage the increase in mortgage interest rates?
2-25-2010 -- Feelings and Attitudes Toward Debt Transform in Housing Bubble Aftermath -- A post guaranteed to change your attitude toward debt.
2-22-2010 -- Principal Forbearance in Loan Modifications Dupe Homedebtors with False Relief -- Many embrace principal forebearance, but they give up any potential for appreciation as a result.
2-17-2010 -- Use FHA Financing: Loan Assumption is the Appreciation of the Twenty-Teens -- Obtaining financing equity through assumable mortgages is the way to benefit from home ownership in the next decade.
Foreclosure Series:
1-22-2010 -- Foreclosure 101: Mechanics of a Trustee Sale
1-21-2010 -- Foreclosure 101: Non-Judicial Foreclosure
1-20-2010 -- Foreclosure 101: Vesting Title
1-13-2010 -- Money Rentership: Housing and the New American Dream -- a realistic look at how debt has slowly eroded the meaning of ownership.
1-12-2010 -- Lenders Are More Culpable than Borrowers -- Apportioning blame among the various guilty parties in the housing bubble.
1-6-2010 -- HELOC Abuse Grading System -- a detailed look at the variety of harmful borrower behaviors.
10-19-2009 -- Rent? or Own? Fall 2009 -- A look at the state of the rent versus own decision in late 2009.
10-7-2009 -- Time to Payoff -- Building on Accelerated Amortization, this posts details how to use this new investment metric.
10-5-2009 -- Accelerated Amortization -- Paying off a loan quicker is the key to an early retirement.
9-16-2009 -- Cure Rates -- The rates at which people "cure" their ailing loans has declined to very low levels. People are walking away.
8-24-2009 -- How Do You Feel About HELOC Abuse? -- After reading several hundred stories of people borrowing and spending several hundred thousand dollars, you get numb to the abuse.
7-20-2009 -- Rental Parity and Beyond -- A conceptual review of the concept of rental parity and how it can be applied to real estate market pricing.
5-11-2009 -- Temporary Affordability and the Third Foreclosure Wave -- An analysis of the problem adjustable rate mortgage create for the future of the housing market.
4-27-2009 -- California Personal Finance: Ponzi Style -- The methods of personal finance developed during the housing bubble created an unsustainable lifestyle.
1-5-2009 -- Debt-To-Income Ratios: The Forgotten Variable -- The impact of debt-to-income ratios on house prices and the housing market.
12-8-2008 -- 4.5% Mortgage Interest Rates? -- What would happen if mortgage interest rates were dropped to 4.5%.
11-12-2008 -- The ARM Problem -- Adjustable rate mortgages scheduled to reset from 2009-2011 are the next wave of foreclosures that will flatten the real estate market.
8-18-2008 -- Affordability Mortgage Products Make Prices Unaffordable -- A frank discussion on the problems caused by lender's solutions to the problem of affordability.
8-11-2008 -- Timing Does Matter -- An analysis dispelling the myths about timing the residential real estate market.
3-12-2008 -- Mortgages as Options -- A look at how borrowers and speculators gamed the system using mortgages as option contracts.
3-10-2008 -- Mortgage Equity Withdrawal -- An overview of the role mortgage equity withdrawal played in the recovery following the 2001 recession.
2-28-2008 -- Affordability -- A review of the concept of affordability and what it means for the housing market.
2-25-2008 -- The Credit Crunch -- A discussion of the causes and implications of the credit crunch.
2-4-2008 -- What is Equity? -- Looking at the components of homeowner equity and the factors that impact it.
1-7-2008 -- The Fallacy of Financial Innovation -- Shattering the myth of "financial innovation" and reinforcing the use of 30-year, fixed-rate, conventionally amortizing mortgages.
2007-05-14 -- The Anatomy of a Credit Bubble -- A detailed, mathematical analysis of the impact changing lending standards had on home prices. This is fundamental to understanding of the mechanics of the real estate bubble.
2007-05-07 -- Your Buyer’s Loan Terms -- The precursor to The Anatomy of a Credit Bubble. It discusses house prices from the perspective of the future buyer of your home. It demonstrates the impact changes in loan terms will have on future buyers and how this will impact the amount your future buyer can bid for your home.
2007-04-23 -- It’s not the Borrowers; It’s the Loans. -- The "subprime containment" meme has been used to quell the fears of investors since the collapse of subprime lending in early 2007. This post examines the spurious nature of the subprime containment idea and explores the implications of the larger problem being hidden from the general public.
2007-04-08 -- Southern California’s Cultural Pathology -- An exploration of the unique cultural beliefs which made the housing bubble take hold in Southern California. This is a critical post to understanding why the bubble was so pronounced here while in other areas of the country it was not as extreme.
2007-03-05 -- How Sub-Prime Lending Created the Housing Bubble -- A simple thought experiment to show how a loosening of lending standards helped create a commodities market mentality and inflated the housing bubble.
2007-03-01 -- Financially Conservative Home Financing -- A review of available financing terms and a discussion of why the new "innovations" in home financing are disasters in the making.
