Appreciation is Dead. It is not merely delayed for a temporary housing price crash only to resume its historic 7+% rate. Appreciation is dead. We will never see high rates of house price appreciation again in California. Sacrilege! Yes, but there are reasons to believe this may be true.

In October of 2000, I attended a conference put on by TradingMarkets.com. The NASDAQ had experienced the spring collapse and summer bear rally. The huge fall sell-off (which was the first of many sell-offs before the bottom was reached in the spring of 2003) was just beginning. One of the speakers at this conference was a very successful hedge fund manager named Mark Boucher. Everyone gathered at the conference had just been through the wildest bull market in history. All were convinced that the market was going to come roaring back. We just needed to get past this painful correction. Does any of this sound familiar?

When Mark Boucher spoke he dropped a bomb on the audience — 20% annual gains in the stock market were not going to be seen again in the next 20 years and perhaps in lifetimes of those assembled… Silence… A pregnant pause… One of the most successful money managers on the planet just spoken the unspeakable; the audience had to think the unthinkable. Heresy! Blasphemy! Was this possible? For a few brief moments the audience was exposed to the naked truth; the veneer of denial was stripped from them. It was a paradigm shift with seismic repercussions. Those who heeded his words made wise investment decisions and survived the bear market. Those who failed to listen bought the bear rallies and were destroyed. Seven years after the peak, the NASDAQ is still down 50%, and none of the last seven years favorably compares to the seven that preceded it. Mark Boucher was right.

I am not as smart as Mark Boucher, and I am not a preeminent real estate investor (I didn’t buy the bubble rally.) My words do not carry the same weight. However, consider what I write here, and you may save yourself a lot of money and avoid a lot of stress as the bubble deflates and the post-bubble market emerges.

.

{adsense}

.

Have you ever wondered why California’s housing market bubbles so frequently and other markets do not? It stems from a combination of two factors: limited supply and high wage growth (and, of course, Southern California’s Cultural Pathology).

Supply is not limited in the way most people think. We are not running out of land. Supply is limited because the process for obtaining supply is cumbersome — which is good for me because that is my job. In other areas of the country, when supplies of housing are low and prices begin to rise, a large amount of supply is brought to market quickly to meet this demand. In California, this is not the case. The entitlement process as outlined in CEQA is both lengthy and costly; therefore, when supply runs low, new supply is slow to the market, and prices rally higher than they would in other areas of the country. The point is that supply shortages are a temporary phenomenon not the permanent result of “running out of land.” Have you noticed that during the crash there is excess inventory on the market, and the builders have overbuilt? This is why.

The fundamental value driving up home prices is the growth in wages — at least indirectly. Wage growth drives rental rates higher, and it is rental rates which determine the fundamental value of housing; therefore, wage growth determines the rate at which housing will increase in value. Irvine has experienced wage growth exceeding other areas of the country. This is why pay scales are currently double the national average. However, this trend cannot continue forever.

Factor Price Equalization

When the cost of a good or service rises, people seek out lower cost alternatives. When the same product is available in a different market, buyers will purchase in the lower cost market until prices equalize. This is most notable in labor markets. After NAFTA was signed, wages for unskilled labor declined in the United States and rose in Mexico. Of greater importance to the higher skilled labor of Irvine is the problem we know as “outsourcing.”

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is happening all around us. I have a relative who works in customer support for a major computer maker. They are working to outsource most of his department to Banglore, India. Nissan has relocated its North American headquarters from Southern California to Tennessee. These are examples of high-paying, high-skill jobs leaving our area. This is happening for two reasons: one, they can pay less in other markets, and two, they can’t get employees to move to Southern California because the cost of living is too high. The second problem will lessen as house prices crash, but the first problem is not going away. We are paid too much in Irvine, and businesses are moving where skilled labor can be found less expensively; therefore, we many not see a continuation of 3% wage growth in Irvine for the future.

Wage Growth vs. House Appreciation

House appreciation cannot exceed wage growth forever: trees cannot grow to the sky. People have to earn money to buy a home (unless of course we become a nation of the landed gentry in which real estate is only transferred through inheritance.) Over the last 25 years, house appreciation in Orange County has outpaced wage growth. Wage growth has averaged 3.4% while house price appreciation has averaged 6.9%. Notice the bubble years (1986-1989) where house prices outpaced income growth followed buy bust years (1990-1995) where wage growth made modest recoveries. What is in our future?

There are only a couple of ways house prices can outpace wage growth: 1. interest rates must decline allowing people to finance larger sums with less money, and 2. debt-to-income ratios must rise as people put higher percentages of their income toward making payments. Both of these phenomenons have been occurring in Orange County over the last 25 years.

Interest Rates

Mortgage interest rates have been on a slow but steady decline since the early 1980’s. Interest rates were at historical highs in the early 80’s to curb inflation, and the decline from these peaks to the 7% to 9% range was to be expected. This initial decline in interest rates coupled with low inflation caused house prices to begin rising again in the late 80’s culminating in the bubble that burst in 1990 leading to 5 consecutive years of declining prices.

During the early 90’s while prices were declining, notice the drop in interest rates from 10.6% in 1989 to 7.2% in 1996. This 30% decline in interest rates made housing more affordable and help limit the declines in the early 90’s. If interest rates had not declined, house prices certainly would have dropped further than they did. Does anyone think interest rates will decline 30% from the 6.3% they are today down to an unprecedented 4.4% to match the debt relief of the early 90’s? The FED is not going to save house prices. In fact, today’s mortgage interest rates are likely not sustainable. The 6.3% today is 20% below the historic 8% average of the last half century due to global capital markets being awash with liquidity from Japan and China among others. With the declining dollar, growing national debt and inflation pressures, it is more likely that interest rates will rise rather than fall.

Debt to Income

One of the often overlooked phenomenons of real estate bubbles is the fluctuations in debt-to-income ratios. DTI ratios is an interesting measure of buyer psychology. In market rallies people act with greed and put larger and larger percentages of their income toward purchasing houses because they are appreciating assets. In market busts, people put smaller and smaller percentages of their income toward house purchases because the value is declining.

Some of the bulls speculate that we have reached a permanently high plateau. This is crazy. The only thing justifying a DTI of 62% is the belief in high rates of appreciation. Why would anyone pay double the cost of rental to “own” unless ownership provided a return on that investment? Once it is obvious that prices are not increasing and even begin to decrease, the party is over. Why would you buy under those circumstances, when it is more rational to wait and pay less? Why would you stretch yourself to buy a house when prices are dropping? This is why prices drop until house payments match their rental equivalent value. At the bottom, it makes sense to buy because it is cheaper than renting. When the market debt-to-income ratio falls below 30%, the bottom is near.

Future Appreciation Rates

As you can see from the charts above, interest rates are at all-time lows, and debt-to-income ratios are at an all-time high. Prices are going to fall — make that crash. This post isn’t about the crash, it is about the lack of appreciation in the aftermath. House prices over the last 25 years have appreciated at a rate greater than wage growth because interest rates have been falling and debt-to-income ratios have been rising. Interest rates cannot continue to fall. As they rise in the future to rates nearer their historic norms, house price appreciation will be held in check. It is likely that house prices will appreciate at rates of less than 3% while interest rates rise, and it will only match the 3% rate of wage growth thereafter. It is also possible that Irvine and Orange County may not see 3% wage growth in the future due to factor price equalization and outsourcing. Sustained appreciation rates of 7% will not be seen in the next 25 years — assuming of course we don’t have another bubble.

Buying after the crash

So what implication does all of this have on a future buying decision? Don’t count on appreciation. If you need to factor in appreciation to make the math work on a home purchase, you will buy too early, and you will pay too much.

Then again, you wouldn’t be alone. Pros make this mistake too. Some of you may have heard the story about one of our major homebuilders in Southern California who had to close their San Diego office due to poor performance. The president of the division routinely used high rates of appreciation in his financial models when analyzing properties to purchase. As a result, the San Diego division overpaid for almost all of its projects and lost the company a great deal of money. Usually, when a major company has problems at a division, they rotate staff. The problems here were so severe it was judged more prudent to wipe the division out and start over. Amazing.

When the cost of ownership is equal to the cost of rental it is safe to buy. Even if prices drop further — which they might — you will not be hurt by it. If you are counting on increasing rents or house price appreciation to get you to breakeven sometime later, you will probably get burned. Remember, appreciation is dead. Rest in Peace.

Denial runs deep in the financial markets. The vast majority of participants either want or need prices to steadily increase. Any facts or opinions that run counter to the idea of ever increasing prices must be quelled in order to prevent a catastrophic collapse of prices due to panic selling. One of the more glaring examples of this phenomenon has been the slow leak of information regarding the upcoming debacle in our housing market.

In February and March as the sub-prime lending implosion became front page news, market bulls were presented with a major public relations problem. It was imperative for the bulls to convince buyers the damage from subprime lending was “contained” and would not “spill over” into other borrower categories and ultimately into the overall economy. The supposition is that the widespread use of exotic loans is not the problem, it is the practice of giving these loans to those with low credit scores. In other words, it is not the loans, it is the borrowers. This is wrong. It is not the borrowers; it is the loans.

As a primer, I would like to illustrate the basic distinctions made with the type of borrower and the type of loan (for a better, more detailed analysis see Calculated Risk). There are 3 main categories of borrowers: Prime, Alt-A and Sub-Prime. Prime borrowers are those with high credit scores, and Sub-Prime borrowers are those with low credit scores. The Alt-A borrowers make up the gray matter in between. Alt-A tends to be closer to Prime as these are often borrowers with high credit scores which for one or more reasons do not meet the strict standards of Prime borrowers. In recent years one of the most common non-conformities of Alt-A loans has been the lack of verifiable income. In short, “liar loans” are generally Alt-A. As the number of deviations from Prime increases, the credit scores decline until finally you are left with Sub-Prime.

.

{adsense}

.

There are also 3 main categories of loans: Conventional, Interest-Only, and Negative Amortization. The distinction between these loans is how the amount of principal is impacted by monthly payments. A conventional mortgage includes some amount of principal in the payment in order to repay the original loan amount. The greater the amount of principal repaid, the quicker the loan is paid off. An interest-only loan does just what it describes; it only pays the interest. This loan doesn’t pay back any of the principal, but it at least “treads water” and does not fall behind. The Negative Amortization loan is one in which the full amount interest is not paid with each payment, and the unpaid interest gets added to the principal balance. Each month, the borrower is increasing the debt. One of the features of all interest-only or negative amortization loans is an interest rate reset. All these loans have provisions where the loan balance comes due either in the form of a balloon payment or an accelerated amortization schedule. Either way, the borrower must either refinance or face a major increase in their monthly loan payment. This increase in payment is what makes these loans such a problem, and this is why it isn’t the borrower, it is the loan.

As you can see from the table above, the category of loan and category of borrower are independent of each other. Starting in the lower left hand corner, we have the lowest risk loan for a lender to make, a Prime Conventional mortgage. As we move up or to the right, the risk increases. The riskiest loan a lender can make is the Negative Amortization loan to a Sub-Prime borrower.

The market apologists have admitted there is risk going up the side of the chart because sub-prime borrowers are beginning to default. These same spin-doctors are denying the risk of default will spill over into Alt-A and Prime. They making this argument because these two categories have historically had low default rates. They conveniently forget all the “liar loans” taken out by those with higher credit scores and payment resets for I/O and neg am loans which were also given to the Alt-A and Prime crowd. Historically, this group has not defaulted because they have not been widely exposed to these loan types. Basically, they are ignoring the risk moving along the bottom of the chart: the risk endemic with Interest-Only and Negative Amortization loans. This is a fatal flaw in their analysis.

So why will so many Alt-A and Prime borrowers go into default? To answer that question, we need to make a more detailed analysis of the exhibit: Adjustable Rate Mortgage Reset Schedule

First, I would suggest you review Financially Conservative Home Financing. In that post I stated, “At the time of reset, if you are unable to make the new payment (your salary does not increase), or if you are unable refinance the loan (home declines in value), you will lose your home. It’s that simple.” It is my contention based on the information in the above chart, we can deduce the Alt-A and Prime borrowers will face one or both of the conditions which will cause them to lose their homes.

Look at the gray bars which make up the majority of the reset amounts due over the next 24 months (2007 and 2008). These are the Sub-Prime borrowers. They are already defaulting in large numbers, and we have all witnessed the tightening of credit (or elimination of credit) being offered to these borrowers. We also know many of these borrowers were put into the dreaded 2/28 loans and they cannot afford the reset. And, as if that isn’t enough, most of these borrowers were given 100% financing (if they could save up for a downpayment, they probably wouldn’t be Sub-Prime.) Therefore, it is probably safe to assume many if not most of these borrowers will default. Why wouldn’t they? Most haven’t put any money into the transaction, they have no equity as prices are declining, and they already have bad credit. What is the worst that could happen? They will just go back to renting, big deal. Think about what that means… a large number of defaults and foreclosures will occur over the next 3 years (the time span will be spread out due to differences in borrower holding power and the time spent in the foreclosure process).

In addition to the tightening credit and worsening buyer psychology, if large numbers of sub-prime borrowers are defaulting over the next 3 years, prices will certainly fall. Therefore, it is also safe to assume that when the Alt-A and Prime borrowers who have taken out adjustable rate mortgages need to refinance starting in earnest 3 years from now (see the red and light gray bars in the Adjustable Rate Mortgage Reset Schedule), they may be underwater and unable to refinance.

Why do I think so many will be underwater? For one, prices will be significantly lower in 2010. In the forums, we have already documented price reductions by the builders of about 15%, and we also know it isn’t helping sales. More builder price reductions are on the way. It isn’t difficult to imagine prices being 30% or more below the peak by 2010. How many Alt-A and Prime borrowers with adjustable rate mortgages do you think have more than 30% equity in their properties?

Nationally, approximately 40% of residential real estate is owned outright; therefore, if the total equity in real estate is 55%, the remaining 60% of homeowners have a total of 15% of home equity. This is admittedly a rough calculation, but it certainly does not appear as if a great many people with mortgages have more than 30% equity in their homes to ensure they are able to refinance. Many bulls have speculated that most Irvine homeowners are sitting on mountains of equity because home prices have increased so dramatically over the last 5 years. Sounds plausible, but it isn’t true. Where did this equity go?

Has anyone else noticed all the conspicuous consumption in Irvine? Every house has two luxury cars in the driveway, the Spectrum is always full of shoppers, and every homeowner is busy competing with their neighbor to see who can look richer (see Southern California’s Cultural Pathology). If you want to know where all the equity went: they spent it.

To bring us back to where we started, a great many Alt-A and Prime borrowers will lose their homes because they will be hopelessly underwater when they need to refinance 3 to 5 years from now. If they had borrowed with conventional mortgages as they did in the past, they would not be facing this mortgage reset timebomb, and they would simply ride out the Sub-Prime debacle just as many homeowners made it through the declines of the early 90’s. However, it is different this time. This time, the loans they have taken out are going to ruin them. It’s not the borrowers, it’s the loans.

There was a recent article posted on MSN about mortgage companies working with FB’s to save their homes from foreclosure. This particular article is most likely part of a public relations campaign from the lending industry to show they are working on the problem. They are bracing themselves for the inevitable congressional hearings which will happen next year. There is nothing quite like an election year crisis to bring out congressional grandstanding by our leading politicians. But I digress… the MSN article got me thinking about what really could be done about the foreclosure problem.

I have written in several posts about the serious foreclosure problem looming as several trillion dollars of mortgages reset to higher payments over the next 5 years. There is no way to effectively restructure payments when a borrower cannot even afford to pay the interest on the debt. Lenders cannot lower interest rates to near zero because then they will lose money on the loan. Any borrower who thinks the lender is actually going to forgive the debt and allow them to keep their home is really living in a fantasy world (I would wager many FBs believe this). Lenders will not take a loss on a property loan and allow borrowers to keep the home: it’s as simple as that.

As much as it pains me to write this, there is a short to medium term solution to the foreclosure problem: convert part of the mortgage to a zero coupon bond. For those of you not steeped in finance, a zero coupon bond is a bond which does not make periodic interest payments. Think of it a zero amortization loan. You don’t pay either the interest or the principal, and both accumulate for the life of the loan. The loan would be due upon the sale of the house.

Here is how it would work for our typical homedebtor: Assume our financial genius utilized 100% financing and took out a $500,000 interest-only mortgage with a 2% teaser rate that is due to adjust to 6%. Let’s further assume his real income (not what he reported on his liar loan) could support a $1,500 payment on a $250,000 conventional 30-year mortgage at 6%. The bank could convert $250,000 to a conventional mortgage, and convert the other $250,000 to a zero coupon bond at 6% due on sale. The homedebtor can now make their payment, and they get to keep their house. But here is the catch: when they sell their house, they will owe the bank a lot of money. If they sell the house in 20 years, they will owe $800,000 on the zero coupon bond note. In other words, all the equity gain on the value of the home will go to the bank.

.

{adsense}

.

This would solve a multitude of problems: First, it would provide a mechanism whereby people who were victims of predatory lending could keep their homes. This would make the homedebtor happy, and it would get government regulators out of the bank’s business. Second, it would make the banks more money in the long run because they are still making their interest profit even if they don’t see it until the homedebtor sells the home (many may not be aware of it, but lenders book income on the increase in principal on a negative amortization loan). Third, since foreclosures would be the primary mechanism facilitating the crash, it would keep home prices from crashing by reducing the number of foreclosures.

Sounds like a panacea, doesn’t it? There are some problems.

The first problem will become apparent when people start selling their houses. People are greedy. They won’t want to give the bank all their equity when they sell. They will conveniently forget the debt relief and avoiding foreclosure and all the problems they had earlier. All they will see is that they sold the house for a lot more than they paid for it, and they did not make any money. And what happens when the appreciation does not match the term of the note? Do they do a short-sale 20 years down the line? This will cause a huge uproar and more calls for congressional intervention. In other words, for everyone involved the day of reckoning is merely delayed, not avoided.

Second, it does nothing for the affordability problem. If prices do not crash, a great many people really will be priced out forever. To solve this problem, banks will make zero coupon bonds available to everyone, and eventually everyone will have them. Think about where we will be then: we will be a society of homedebtors who have collectively agreed to give all our equity to the bank for the pride of ownership. Starts to sound a bit like Pottersville from It’s a Wonderful Life. Is that the way we all want to live?

Third, The zero coupon bond solution would effectively eliminate the move-up market because you won’t have any equity to take with you from house to house. Unless you save money or get a big raise so you can afford a larger payment, you can’t buy a more expensive home. This would result in a dramatic flattening of prices. In other words, the low end would be supported at inflated levels while the high end would stagnate or decline.

Fourth, Based on the problems above, it will be difficult to find a new equilibrium in prices. How would people figure out how much anything is worth? How would all price ranges be supported equally? Small changes in the interest rate on the zero coupon bond can make the difference between hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time of sale, particularly on a long-term hold. Does anyone think this will turn out in favor of the borrower? I suspect we would see a lot of short-sales as the banks graciously agree to take all the gains and forgive the rest of the debt. This takes us back to our first problem with angry, greedy sellers.

Finally, I think this is only a short to medium term solution to the foreclosure problem. For as much as we are addicted to credit in this country, there is a point where people will say “enough is enough.” When a house fails to have any investment value, people will not be so excited about home ownership. People can blather on about pride of ownership all they want, but people want to make money on selling their houses. Inflated valuations are only supported by greed. If home ownership becomes less desirable, prices will end up falling back to their rental equivalent value because the demand will not be there. In the long run, we would end up with prices where they should be anyway, it would just be a much more prolonged and painful journey. Does anyone want to experience what the Japanese went through?

When faced with the prospect of more than a million foreclosures, some Wall Street genius (I am being facetious) is going to come up with a solution very similar to what I just presented. To be honest, zero coupon bond structures and other exotic financing terms are quite common in complex real estate deals like the ones I see on a daily basis in my line of work. Exotic loan terms are the exclusive purview of sophisticated investors who understand what they are doing. They are not intended for consumption by the general public. Given the profusion of interest-only, and negative amortization loans in the market today, is it any surprise we have such a big mess now?

.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Southern California is a beautiful place. The weather is perfect, there is a lot to do, and the people are generally friendly and keep out of your business. For those reasons and many others, I have chosen to make Southern California my home. However, Southern California is not perfect. The culture is infected with pathological beliefs that have led us to the huge problem with house affordability and the impending disaster in our real estate market.

What do I mean by Cultural Pathology? There are certain beliefs if widely held and acted upon by a group of people leads inevitably to collective suffering and/or destruction. One example we all see is in the American auto industry. Before imports hit our shores the American auto industry used to believe the quality of their product did not matter, people would buy their product irrespective of quality. For many years, the industry was successful despite this pathology. This belief allowed offshore competitors to enter the market, build market share, and finally take over the industry. The American auto industry’s belief system has had a pathologic effect on their business which has caused much suffering in Detroit, and it may ultimately lead to the bankruptcy and destruction of our major automakers.

The best treatise on the pathology of cultural beliefs was George Orwell’s novel 1984. In Orwell’s vision, a totalitarian State had convinced the populace the following:

• WAR IS PEACE
• FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
• IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Although these statements are clearly contradictory, in the story the slogans do make sense to the State. For example, through constant “war”, the State can keep domestic peace; when the people obtain freedom, they become enslaved to it, and the ignorance of the populace is the strength of the State. Just as Orwell’s Big Brother convinced the populace the above contradictions were true, Southern Californians (with a little help from their own Big Brother, David Lereah, president of the National Association of Realtors) have convinced themselves the following:

• APPRECIATION IS INCOME
• CREDIT IS SAVINGS

• DEBT IS WEALTH

Just as these statements are contradictory and ridiculous, the proof that these statements are believed is that they are reflected in the actions of Southern Californians. For example, through borrowing against one’s increasing home values, appreciation is turned to income; when people obtain more credit, they spend it like available savings, and a large amount of debt used to finance a large, opulent home makes one wealthy. Ask any homedebtor in Southern California, and they will tell you that makes perfect sense.

The problem is rooted in a basic misunderstanding of what separates the rich from the poor: the habit of saving. You have heard the expression, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” It is more accurate to say the rich save money and the poor spend it: in the end, the rich will have money, and the poor will have none. This is not one of life’s inequities, but rather of of life’s simple truths.

When you hear your average Joe tell you he wants to be rich, what he is really saying is he wants unlimited spending power. He wants the ability to spend like the rich people he sees wearing Rolexes and driving BMWs to their mansions in Shady Canyon. This is why, when given the chance, poor people will emulate the rich by spending beyond their means in order to be rich. Of course, in the process, they spend themselves poor.

Appreciation is Income

Look at the difference between the behavior of rich and poor when it comes to home price appreciation. The rich view home price appreciation as adding to their net worth. If lower interest rates allow them to refinance, they will restructure their debt to pay off the loan more quickly in order to increase their wealth. Poor people view home price appreciation as income; free money for them to spend. If lower interest rates allow them to refinance, they will restructure their loan to pull as much home equity as possible and reduce their payment as much as possible so they can spend more. If any net worth happens to accumulate, they obtain a home equity line of credit and spend the appreciation as quickly as possible — it makes them feel rich even though it really makes them poor.

Credit is Savings

So how do the rich and poor deal with credit? The rich don’t carry consumer debt. Why would they pay interest on a credit balance when it almost always costs more than the income they earn on their savings? The rich will use credit sparingly and most often pay off any credit balances each month as the bill comes due. In contrast, the poor carry as much consumer debt as they can afford to service. Whenever they receive an increase in a credit line, they believe they have more money to spend, just like it was savings. In a strange way, a credit account is like a savings account, only it has a negative balance. In a savings account, the saver earns money; in a credit account, the spender loses money. Again, the rich have savings, and the poor have credit.

Debt is Wealth

There are a great many Southern California residents who live in big houses, and they believe that makes them rich. To them, the possession and use of an expensive house makes them wealthy even if they have no equity in the property. The rich buy less home than they can afford and work to pay off the debt in order to maximize their net worth. The poor stretch their finances to possess more home than they can afford with loan terms which never retire the debt, or in the case of negative amortization loans, actually increases their debt held against the property. This ensures they either never gain any equity or only gain it by appreciation, and as mentioned previously, if prices appreciate they quickly withdraw the gain to fuel more consumer spending.

It’s a California Thing

So what happens when you give poor people money? They spend it. I’m sure you have all heard the stories of people who won the lottery and managed to spend themselves into bankruptcy a few years later. These stories are classic examples of the pathology of the beliefs of spenders. A great many Southern Californians are spenders. This is why I contend that Southern California has a strong cultural pathology. The reason our house prices have been bid up to such dizzying heights is because there is a high percentage of our population in Southern California that subscribes to the spending habits I have described. They went out and borrowed as much money as they could with suicide loans, bought up all the real estate they could get their hands on, and in the process drove real estate prices into the stratosphere. In other areas of the country, reckless spending is not so trendy, and home prices have not been bid up so high.

.

{adsense}

.

I grew up in the Upper Midwest in a rural farm community. Pretentious displays of conspicuous consumption are less common in the Midwest, and consumerism is often viewed with contempt rather than envy. In short, there is a smaller percentage of the general population in the Midwest with the aforementioned pathologic beliefs. To prove this, I would like to profile Minnetonka, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis with very similar income and demographics to Irvine. According to Sperling’s Best Places, the median income in Minnetonka, Minnesota is $84,024, and the median income in Irvine, California is $84,253. I think that is close enough to be a good comparable. The median home price in Minnetonka is $305,600 and the median home price in Irvine is $689,000 (92620 Zip Code). If my thesis is correct, one would expect to find a much higher percentage of home loans utilizing exotic loan terms in Irvine as compared to Minnetonka. Remember the Map of Misery?

In fact, according to the map, in 2006 the Minneapolis area had 8.7% of its loan originations were negative amortization, while Orange County had 32%. In all of California more than 80% of loan originations in 2006 were either option ARM or interest-only. Here we have two groups of people with the same median income, and with the same access to credit making very different choices. Potential homebuyers in Minnetonka and Irvine faced the same decision on taking out a suicide loan and buying more house than they can afford or chosing to live within their means. Very few in Minnetonka chose to overextend themselves, so they did not bid up the values of their houses. Orange County (and the rest of Southern California) chose to utilize exotic financing and thereby real estate prices were bid much, much higher. The high utilization of exotic financing was the cause of the price increase not the result of it. Nobody was forced to buy.

So if we accept the premise that Southern California has a high percentage of its population with the spending habits I have described, so what? Everyone here in Southern California is spending freely, feeling rich, and enjoying life. What is the problem? Where is the pathology? Isn’t it true Californians are just more financially sophisticated than the rubes back on the farm in the Midwest?

It is pathologic because it is not sustainable: It is a house of cards. There is an inevitable Day of Reckoning when all debts must be paid. Charles Ponzi (see image below) was the most extreme example of the pathologies illustrated in this post. So extreme was his activities, that the term Ponzi Scheme has become synonymous with the use of ever increasing amounts of investment or debt. This scheme is also encapsulated in the expression “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” At some point, the debt becomes so large that no lender is willing to loan more money and no greater fool can be found to bail them out, and the whole system comes crashing down. However, while the debt was building, the debtor became accustomed to a certain lifestyle and level of spending. When the credit is cut off, the debtor can no longer spend, and a great deal of suffering ensues (See Dr. Housing Bubble).

We are quickly approaching the Day of Reckoning in our housing market. In my view this will be Armageddon for California debtors: the spending will stop, they will lose their homes and with it their illusion of wealth, and they most definitely will not be enjoying life. The cause of all the weeping and gnashing of teeth will not be some exogenous event, but rather a direct result of the circumstances they themselves created.

.

For a refresher read: Financially Conservative Home Financing

P.S. Go back and click on the images.

Many people when they first discover bubble blogs think housing bears are tinfoil-hat-wearing crackpots with extremely pessimistic outlooks on life. There are perma-bears (Roubini, Shiller, Fleckstein) as well as perma-bulls (Watts, NAR, Kudlow). The truth is generally somewhere in between. I learned long ago that extremists are never happy people because they seldom get their way. As the Buddha noted, it is the "middle path" that leads to happiness. I have spent my voting life as a independent/Libertarian voting for whoever I believed to be the best candidate, most generally a moderate. However, there are times when what is perceived as an extreme is actually the correct view. As Barry Goldwater noted, "…extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! … moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Many who read my post "Predictions for the Irvine Housing Market" thought the scenario I described as extreme. It only looks extreme because the psychology of the bubble as skewed the collective perspective of the market. That Predictions post was moderate; this one is extreme.

We have been witnessing a great deal of bad news lately, the impact of which cannot be good. If the perfect storm continues to form over our local housing market, things could become much worse, much faster than even the most bearish among us think possible. Have any of you noticed the carnage in Sacramento? For the doomsday scenario to take place, we would need the following: Foreclosures, unemployment, rising interest rates and tightening credit, and a decrease in home ownership. The combination of these forces could make the price collapse a catastrophe.

Foreclosures

We all know the wave of foreclosures is coming.

And it should continue unabated for 5 more years.

There isn't much more to say. It is not bad yet, but it will be very bad, and it will go on for a long time.

Unemployment

We know layoffs are coming to Irvine/Orange County. New Century went bankrupt along with numerous other sub-prime lenders based in Orange county. People are already losing jobs. I think it is save to speculate this will have ripple effects through the local economy. Even if unemployment remains low, how much will incomes decline? Mortgage brokers, realtors and others in the REIC have been living on the transactions created by the borrowing of those about to go bankrupt. They may find other work, but the $250,000 a year days are over. The only mystery is how bad the unemployment problem will become. Right now, things don't look good.

Rising Interest Rates and Tightening Credit

We know mortgage interest rates are near historic lows.

The large number of foreclosures will make lenders more cautious (either that or the losses will put them out of business). Increased lender caution will result in a tightening of credit and an increase in interest rates to compensate them for the increased risk. An increase to 8%, which is near the historic norm, would seem to be likely. If lenders become very cautious, an overshoot to 10% or more could easily take place. Interest rates have not begun to rise yet, and many are holding out hope that the FED will save them. It won't. Due to the increasing risk premiums, the best one can hope for is a lowering of the FED funds rate to compensate for the increased risk premium. We will have to wait and see.

Credit is already tightening. This cannot be denied. The increased cost and decreased availability of credit will have a severe impact on demand.

Credit Suisse estimates the most recent credit tightening just eliminated 21% of the borrowers in the market. This is assuming further problems in Alt-A or prime loans do not force credit to tighten even further (in other words, credit will tighten further.) This will crush demand and it will also put an end to serial refinancing. The inability to refinance is what will cause all the resets shown in the previous chart to go into foreclosure. Which leaves us with the most important question: Who is going to buy all of these houses in foreclosure?

Decrease in Home Ownership Rates

Ownership rates in Orange County have risen 2.8% between 1994 and 2005. This is actually behind the rest of the country where homeownership rates have increased nearly 5%. This is a direct result of lending money to those borrowers previously excluded from the housing market either because the borrower did not have the downpayment, or they lacked good credit.

Home ownership rates will decline as homeowners lose their homes in foreclosure. With foreclosure comes bad credit; those with bad credit just got eliminated from the buyer pool. Therefore, people who lose their house to foreclosure will move into a rental, and the previously owner-occupied home will likely enter the rental pool. (A popular misconception is that rents will go up. The number of rentals will increase along with the number of renters.)

There will be some new buyers (like many on this board) who have cash and good credit; however, this group is small in number, far smaller than the number of foreclosures about to hit the market (if you don't believe me, ask yourself how many potential buyers you know with cash and good credit.) This means a significant number, perhaps a majority, of the houses due to hit the market due to foreclosure will be purchased as rentals.

{adsense}

If the bulk of the houses going through foreclosure are going to be purchased as rentals, prices will have to decline to the point where a rental generates a positive cashflow. Prices are double that today! Home prices will have to decline at least 50% for properties to make financial sense as rentals, so if this is the fate of the bulk of the upcoming foreclosure inventory, prices will decline at least 50% before buyers will enter the market and adsorb this inventory.

Conclusions

Foreclosures, unemployment, rising interest rates and tightening credit, and a decrease in home ownership are all required in some measure to create the doomsday scenario. Do I think this will happen? Probably not, but it could. Did anyone think the NASDAQ could drop from 5200 to 1200 from 2000-2003? Did anyone think housing prices in California would drop from $200K to $177K from 1991-1996 in our last "correction?" Did anyone think real estate prices in Japan would drop 64% between 1991 and 2005? When bubbles collapse, they often drop lower and last longer than anyone thinks.

Today we do not have any of these conditions to an impactful degree. Maybe these conditions will not develop further; however, all indications are that these problems will develop and get worse. So how bad could bad get? Ask them in Sacramento, their party is just getting started.

Market Decline Extreme Spreadsheet

Get this party started on a Saturday night

Everbody's waiting for me to arrive

Sending out the message to all of my friends

We'll be looking flashy in my Mercedes Benz

GET THE PARTY STARTED by: Pink