Predatory Lending/ This is for you Mr. Klaty

Bert, you should write about your thoughts on predatorial lending... I am generally confused by some of my liberal/big government friend’s ideas on this. A few years ago, I heard cries that poorer folks with less assets and poor credit were unfairly being denied loans. Some lenders were even accused of being racist, etc for not making certain loans. Now, I hear cries that lenders were in fact lending to folks who had no business in a loan and are therefore being "predatorial", etc.

Robb, unfortunately our country was founded on racism. This idea of racism is systematically linked to our governmental policies and the particular policy that relates to housing is called “Redlining”. This practice created segregation, propagated racism and was the reason we needed Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. I am of the opinion that we by limiting government to just creating policies to monitor, regulate, and sustain our system of greed we continue to prolong the reparation our country needs.

Predortorial lending started with a system called, “Redlining”, which is by far the most significant mechanism used to create and sustain segregation. According to Denton and Massey:

beginning in the 1930s, the federal government launched a series of programs designed to increase employment in the construction industry and make homeownership widely available to the American public. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was the first of these programs, and it served as a model for later efforts.... Unfortunately for blacks, the HOLC also initiated and institutionalized the practice of "redlining." This discriminatory practice grew out of a rating system HOLC developed to evaluate the risks associated with loans made to specific urban neighborhoods. Four categories of neighborhoods were established, and lowest was coded with the color red; it and the next-lowest category virtually never received HOLC loans. Black areas were invariably rated as fourth grade and redlined. [These practices] lent the power, prestige, and support of the federal government to the systematic practice of racial discrimination.
In the 1930s and 1940s banks used the HOLC maps to make their own loan decisions. Thus HOLC not only channeled federal funds away from black neighborhoods but was also responsible for a much larger and more significant disinvestment in black areas by private institutions.
By far the greatest effect of the HOLC rating system, however, came from its influence on the underwriting practices of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA) during the 1940s and 1950s. These loan programs together completely reshaped the residential housing market of the United States and pumped millions of dollars into the housing industry during the postwar era. Loans made by the FHA and the VA were a major impetus behind the rapid suburbanization of the United States after 1945... the marriage of FHA financing and new construction techniques made it cheaper to buy new suburban homes than to rent comparable older dwellings in the central city.
As a result, the FHA and VA contributed significantly to the decline of the inner city by encouraging the selective out-migration of middle-class whites to the suburbs. "In evaluating neighborhoods, the agency [FHA] followed the HOLC's earlier lead in racial matters; it too manifested an obsessive concern with the presence of what the 1939 FHA Underwriting Manual called “inharmonious racial or nationality groups." According to the manual, "if a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes."
Now that the suburban migration is declining, and rich white folk want to move back into the urban sector we see “gentrification” and the creation “reverse redlining” as a powerful phenomena, as FHA continues to regulate greed and consolidate infrastructure power with private industry and mortgage companies. The only interest for a business is to maximize profit, by which it capitalizes of off greed and consumer ignorance. Furthermore, Gregory D. Squires suggests in his Predatory Lending: Redlining in Reverse:
After decades of redlining practices that starved many urban communities for credit and denied loans to racial minorities, today a growing number of financial institutions are flooding these same markets with exploitative loan products that drain residents of their wealth. Such “reverse redlining” may be as problematic for minority families and older urban neighborhoods as has been the withdrawal of conventional financial services. Instead of contributing to homeownership and community development, predatory lending practices strip the equity homeowners have struggled to build and deplete the wealth of those communities for the enrichment of distant financial services firms.
There are no precise quantitative estimates of the extent of predatory lending. But the growth of subprime lending (higher cost loans to borrowers with blemishes on their credit records) in recent years, coupled with growing law enforcement activity in this area, clearly indicates a surge in a range of exploitative practices. Not all subprime loans are predatory, but virtually all predatory loans are subprime. Some subprime loans certainly benefit high-risk borrowers who would not qualify for conventional, prime loans. Predatory loans, however, charge higher rates and fees than warranted by the risk, trapping homeowners in unaffordable debt and often costing them their homes and life savings. Examples of predatory practices include:
• Balloon payments that require borrowers to pay off the entire balance of a loan by making a substantial payment after a period of time during which they have been making regular monthly payments;
• Required single premium credit life insurance, where the borrower must pay the entire annual premium at the beginning of the policy period rather than in monthly or quarterly payments. (With this cost folded into the loan, the total costs, including interest payments, are higher throughout the life of the loan);
• Homeowners insurance where the lender requires the borrower to pay for a policy selected by the lender;
• High pre-payment penalties that trap borrowers in the loans;
• Fees for services that may or may not actually be provided;
• Loans based on the value of the property with no regard for the borrower’s ability to make payments;
• Loan flipping, whereby lenders use deceptive and high-pressure tactics resulting in the frequent refinancing of loans with additional fees added each time;
• Negatively amortized loans and loans for more than the value of the home, which result in the borrower owing more money at the end of the loan period than when they started making payments.
Here are some numbers to illustrate the extent of the problem: The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University reported that mortgage companies specializing in subprime loans increased their share of home purchase mortgage loans from 1 to 13 percent between 1993 and 2000. Economists at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight found that sub-prime loans are concentrated in neighborhoods with high unemployment rates and declining housing values. Almost 20 percent of refinance loans to borrowers earning less than 60 percent of area median income in 2002 were made by sub-prime lenders, compared to just over 7 percent for borrowers earning 120 percent of median income or higher, according to research by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The Center for Community Change reported that African Americans are three times as likely as whites to finance their homes with sub-prime loans; this is true even between upper-income blacks and whites. The Joint Center for Housing Studies has also revealed that race continues to be a factor in the distribution of sub-prime loans after other individual and neighborhood factors are taken into consideration.
One cost of the sudden increase in sub-prime lending has been an increase in foreclosure rates. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies, borrowers with sub-prime loans are eight times more likely to default than those with prime conventional loans. Yet, it has been estimated that between 30 and 50 percent of those receiving sub-prime loans would, in fact, qualify for prime loans.