Mr. Stern Goes to Washington

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on April 11

Scott Stern runs St. Louis-based Lenders One, which provides services to 110 mortgage banking firms. On Thursday he testified before the Senate Banking Committee on what he calls Scott Stern’s first law of economics. That is: To stem the fall in housing prices, the country must address the foreclosure problem. Keep borrowers in the homes, less housing inventory comes on the market and prices stay up.

Like many in the mortgage biz he’s frustrated that the Fed’s sharp cuts in rates haven’t brought folks back buying homes. “There is a crisis of confidence,” he says. Stern supports Senator Chris Dodd’s proposal to allow mortgage loan services to shave 10% off the loan amounts of troubled borrowers. Mortgage investors, not the government would take the hit. That way borrowers could refinance into safer, goverment-insured fixed rate loans. “They’re trying to put incentives in place to encourage investors to participate,” Stern says. “There’s a lot of good thinking on this.”

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Reader Comments

Jim D

April 11, 2008 11:47 PM

It's not a crisis of confidence - it's a crisis of affordability. Like many Americans, I resent my tax dollars going toward keeping houses unaffordable - by bailing out banks.

Dropping 10% off of loans before selling them to the gov't is likely to be the biggest gov't giveaway since they were granting land in the western territories. Why? Because house prices have *already* dropped by more than 10%.

Tell ya what - cut the mortgages in half, and then maybe we should consider this plan.

And the worst part? It won't help very many homeowners - they'll still be stuck in houses that they're paying way too much for. This is a love letter to banks, pure and simple.

Shame on you for printing this ridiculous tripe without any analysis whatsoever to go along with it. Someone might even get the wrong idea and think it was to benefit homeowners...

www.helpwithforecloure.blogspot.com

April 13, 2008 10:51 AM

I wish more lenders would do more than lip service. Homeowners have been asking for reasonable principle reductions and banks would rather incurr 2X (or WAY more) by forcing the homeowner out at short sale or forelosure.

FreeMarket

April 22, 2008 02:33 PM

let home prices fall where they may without government intervention--ultimately, it's a free market that's benefits all.

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BusinessWeek editors Peter Coy, Dean Foust, Chris Palmeri and Prashant Gopal chronicle the highs and lows of the housing and mortgage markets on their Hot Property blog. In print and online, the Hot Property team first wrote about the potential downside of lenders pushing riskier, "option ARM" mortgages and the rise in mortgage fraud back in 2005—well ahead of many other media outlets. Hot Property was a finalist for "Best Media-Affiliated Business Blog" in the 2007 EPpy Awards, presented by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek, and was named among the 25 most influential real estate blogs of 2007 by Inman News.

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