Fannie May: The Day That Alt-A Died

Bloomberg is reporting Fannie Mae, Battling Losses, to End Alt-A Mortgages.

Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage- finance company, will stop buying or guaranteeing Alt-A home loans, such as those that require little or no documentation of borrower incomes or assets, by yearend.

The company announced the changes when reporting its fourth straight quarterly loss today. The second-quarter net loss of $2.3 billion, or $2.54 a share, included $5.3 billion in credit- related expenses.

McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac, which reported an $821 million quarterly loss two days ago, said that Alt-A mortgages were the biggest reason for a surge in its foreclosure losses. The delinquency rate for the $190 billion of the loans owned by Freddie Mac or underlying the bonds the company guarantees jumped to 3.7 percent on June 30, from 1.8 percent on Dec. 31.

Freddie Mac (FRE) missed earnings expectations by a mile and today Fannie Mae (FNM) reported similar news:

Fannie Mae Posts Fourth Straight Loss, Cuts Dividend

.

Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage- finance company, cut its dividend 86 percent after posting a loss that was more than three times analysts' estimates and said the worst housing slump since the Great Depression is deepening.

Fannie, which owns or insures about 25 percent of all U.S. mortgages, said credit losses rose 66 percent to $5.3 billion as delinquencies rose. ...

The results "increase the probability of the government stepping in," said Paul Miller, an analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. in Arlington, Virginia, who has an "underperform" rating on both companies. "Neither of these companies have properly provisioned for what we're heading into. This thing is going to get worse and last longer and deeper than they originally thought."

I spoke about Freddie Mac's preposterous claims on expected losses yesterday in Fannie, Freddie Reality Check: The Big Bailout Is Coming.

Chris Whalen On GSEs:

Recognize the economic realities. The GSE's cannot function without the backing of the Treasury. They can't borrow at rates low enough to make their business model work unless the full faith and credit is there. It's Done. It's just a question of when we recognize reality. $80 billion dollars is not enough to back Fannie and Freddie. It should have been $800 billion. This whole thing is like a platypus.... Fannie Mae is nothing but a big fixed income hedge fund, the biggest in the world.

While I agree with most of Whalen's comments about what is happening, I certainly disagree that a bailout of the GSEs is the right solution. Right or wrong, the big bailout is coming, but it will not be $800 billion. The statement above is about capitalization and funding, not about expected losses.

Calculated Risk posted some interesting comments from Fannie Mae's conference call in Fannie Mae: Q2 Ended in June, but July was Worse. Here are a few of them:

July was a tough month for our credit performance. We experienced higher defaults and higher loan loss severities in the markets that were experiencing the steepest home price declines. And that gave us higher charge-offs than we had experienced in any month in the second quarter, and higher than we had expected.

Home prices have cratered in certain markets since the peak -- Cape Coral, Florida, down 50%; Las Vegas, down 35%; northern Virginia, down 30%; and in California, Modesto, and Stockton, down 50%; Riverside, down 40%. The list goes on. Alt-A foreclosures have doubled in southern California. Our average serious delinquency rate in Florida increased in June to over 3% -- four times the average on our total book of business last year. Almost 2% of the loans in our Florida book are now referred to foreclosure. So, the housing market has returned to earth fast and hard.

The

Fannie Mae Press Release

was interesting.

“Volatility and disruptions in the capital markets became even more pronounced in July. In addition, credit performance has continued to deteriorate and, based on our experience in July, we anticipate further increases in our combined loss reserves. Given this volatility and the build-up of our reserve, as well as the uncertainties inherent in the U.S. economy and the housing market, we are taking a series of additional actions that reflect our ongoing focus on conserving and enhancing our capital, as well as managing our credit risk through the balance of this cycle.”

While we continue to expect home price declines in 2008 to be within our estimated 7 to 9 percent range, and peak-to-trough home price declines to be within our estimated 15 to 19 percent range, we see the trend moving toward the high end of those ranges, driven in particular by higher home price declines in certain regions. We are increasing our forecast for our credit loss ratio for the full-year to 23 to 26 basis points, as compared to our previous guidance of 13 to 17 basis points. We continue to anticipate that our credit loss ratio will increase further in 2009 compared with 2008. We also expect significant additions to our combined loss reserves through the remainder of 2008. Finally, while we expect that 2008 will be our peak year for credit-related expenses, the total amount of credit-related expenses will be significant in 2009.

All of this makes one wonder what the heck Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron was smoking yesterday when stated Freddie would postpone raising capital, something that would make sense only if conditions were expected to get better, not worse.

Fannie Mae's decision to cancel Alt-A loans tells the story. Expect losses on Alt-A to continue to horrendous, so much so that Fannie had to throw in the towel on Alt-A loans.

Lyrics American Pie

A long long time ago

I can still remember how that housing used to make me smile

And I knew if I had my chance

That I could make those people dance

And maybe they'd be happy for a while

But February made me shiver

With every paper I'd deliver

Bad news on the doorstep

I couldn't take one more step

I can't remember if I cried

When I read about the foreclosed brides

But something touched me deep inside

The day that Alt-A died

Comments

[p-mo:]

I don't think you understand what Alt-A's are. They are not no-doc loans. GSE's were never allowed to play in that space.

2008 Aug 08 05:12 PM

[icandoitdon:]

alt-a loans are otherwise known as "alterntive-documentat... loans for borrowers who don’t have proof of income from traditional employment. a credit check replaces income verification.

and until now, gse's have always been in this space. 11% of fannie's portfolio consisted of such loans, and contributed to half of their credit losses in the current quarter. they're not called "liar loans" without reason.

2008 Aug 08 06:50 PM

[discov:]

I am short the suckers. I don't think the bailout will include the saving of the common stock. (but then again, Paulson doesn't care what I think. Neither should he.)
concisetrading.blogspo.../
Ryan

2008 Aug 08 06:51 PM

[p-mo:]

Nope, GSE's could not and cannot buy non-verified loans. Alt-A is a broad definition of loans existing between subprime and prime, but the nature of Alt-A that FNM/FRE owned were not of the type characterized by this article.

2008 Aug 08 07:18 PM

[prescient11:]

This guy is such a genius, no. It'll be fun when these smug SOBs realize the sky hasn't quite fallen yet.

2008 Aug 08 11:25 PM

[icandoitdon:]

P-Mo:

a defining characteristic of alt-a loans is that they do not have satisfactory documented evidence of recurring income or assets necessary to support the loans. period. that's why borrowers pay higher rates for such loans.

if FNM had no such loans on their books, which is what you're implying, maybe you can describe what they were talking about when they said they were exiting the alt-a business.

2008 Aug 09 12:28 AM

[p-mo:]

Icandoitdon;

I guess what I am trying to say is that Alt-A is a somewhat loosely defined category of loans that exists in the space between normal conforming "prime" mortgages and super-toxic "subprime" loans. Alternative-documentio... is one characteristic that might put a loan into that category, but there are others, i.e.; lower LTV, etc... The Alt-As that the GSEs own/owned should be charecterized as the highest quality of the Alt-A varieties, not hte lowest. My contention is that this article implies that FNM had books full of really junky stuff, and that just isn't the case.

2008 Aug 09 09:51 AM

[icandoitdon:]

thanks for clarifying.

i would argue that any mortgage loan on the books of a lender that doesn't have rock-solid proof of inome is junk, absent a reasonable equity stake, e.g. 10-20% many of these loans had little or nothing down.

FNM and FRE had too little capital to support the risk of non-conforming loans on their balance sheet, enabled by their monopoly access to government-insured money. absent that, they could not have existed.

2008 Aug 09 01:09 PM