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Tag Archives: Moody’s

Market Forecasts for Home Prices Continue to Darken

Home prices have hit upon relatively stable ground in recent months -- a welcome reprieve from the freefall days most markets had grown acutely accustomed to after the reverberating bursting of the housing bubble. But that stability may be fleeting fast. If you heed the words of the seers keeping a close watch over industry trends and movements in price lines, you should be bracing for another decline in property values, as the elusive floor drops a little lower.

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CMBS Delinquencies Moderate, but Rate Still Above 8%: Reports

Special servicers of commercial real estate loans are feverishly pursing workouts and liquidations. Their efforts have helped to moderate increases in past dues, but delinquency rates, nonetheless, continue to rise. Two industry reports released last week served to drive this point home. Fitch Ratings says the delinquency rate on loans held in its rated commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) hit 8.48 percent in August. Moody's reported a similar increase to 8.10 percent.

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Banks Have Recognized Two-Thirds of Loan Losses: Moody’s

Moody's Investors Service says U.S. banks have already written off nearly two-thirds of the real estate loans expected to go sour through 2011. The credit ratings agency projects banks will incur $744 billion of loan charge-offs between 2008 and 2011. Moody's analysts say an estimated $476 billion of these losses have already been recognized, leaving $268 billion, or 36 percent, remaining. So far, 68 percent of residential mortgage losses have been accounted for versus 49 percent of bad commercial real estate loans.

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Moody’s Expects New Originator Compensation Rules to Lower Defaults

The Federal Reserve has issued new rules intended to protect consumers from deceptive mortgage lending, including explicit restrictions on how mortgage brokers and loan officers can be compensated. Specifically, the impending payment requirements, which go into effect next April, prohibit loan originators from double-charging for origination fees and from steering borrowers into less-than-optimal loan products in return for higher compensation. Moody's says these changes will translate into a lower probability of default on mortgage loans.

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Lawmakers Challenge Fannie Mae’s New Policy on Strategic Defaulters

A faction of House Democrats have called on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Fannie Mae's regulator to suspend the GSE's recently announced policy to sue homeowners who strategically default on their mortgage. The group of lawmakers, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, called the policy ""opaque, overbroad, and punitive."" They decried Fannie for using taxpayer dollars to penalize underwater homeowners, and maintained that the policy runs counter to the national need to stem a devastating tide of foreclosures.

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Housing Supply and Demand Won’t Balance until 2012: Moody’s

Moody's Investors Service says it expects home price appreciation to be ""soft"" for the next couple of years. The company says there were 1.8 million more vacant homes sitting on the market than what is considered the norm at the end of the second quarter, reflecting a rise in the number of homes that lenders are repossessing. According to Moody's, it will not be until 2012 that demand and supply conditions are balanced enough to drive price appreciation that matches the pace of inflation.

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Moody’s Reports Commercial Property Prices Are 41% Below Peak

Real estate prices on U.S. commercial properties dropped 4 percent in June, according to data released by Moody's Investors Service Thursday. The decline followed two months of price increases, illustrating that ""performance remains choppy"" in the commercial real estate sector, the New York-based ratings agency said. Moody's index is now 41.4 percent below the peak that was recorded in October 2007, but 4.2 percent above the recession low that occurred in October 2009.

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RealtyTrac Foreclosure Data Now Available through Moody’s Analytics

RealtyTrac's foreclosure, property, loan, and home sales data is now available via Moody's Analytics, an independent provider of economic forecasting and credit risk services. By aggregating RealtyTrac's proprietary foreclosure information and combining it with local economic and house price measures, Moody's says banks, asset managers, and federal and local governments are given insight into all stages of the foreclosure process.

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Losses on CMBS Loan Liquidations Climb in Q2: Moody’s

The severity of losses on liquidating loans backing U.S. commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) exceeded their historical average in the second quarter, Moody's Investors Service says in a new report. During Q2, the credit ratings agency says the 342 commercial real estate loans liquidated for a loss had a weighted average loss severity of 42.8 percent, 740 basis points higher than the current average. And Moody's expects loss severity to worsen as more 2006-2008 loans go bad.

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Double-Dip Recession Threatens to Shave 20% off Home Prices: Moody’s

Could the U.S. economy slip back into the throes of the recession that nearly crippled the nation's financial system and protracted any semblance of a housing recovery? The analysts at Moody's think so. They say the odds of a near-term double-dip recession have increased to one in four. And they warn that if the economy sinks back into recession, housing activity will follow. If such a scenario were to play out, Moody's says home prices are likely to fall by another 20 percent before they stabilize in early 2012.

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