Wall Street Sounds The Alarm

From the LA Times:

Default rate of 'piggyback' loans spurs Wall Street to action

Wall Street is sounding the alarm on one of the most popular ways to buy a house in many high-cost areas around the country — so-called "piggyback" programs that mesh first mortgages with second-lien credit lines or mortgages.

As of July 1, the most influential ratings agency in the mortgage arena, Standard & Poor's Corp., has upped the ante for lenders who fund piggyback deals. The move is likely to raise interest rates and fees for some home purchasers this summer, say mortgage experts, and could reduce the volume and availability of piggyback programs overall.

The reason for the change, according to Standard & Poor's credit analyst Kyle Beauchamp, is that an exhaustive study of piggyback loans found them anywhere from 43% to 50% more likely to go into default than comparable stand-alone first-lien purchase transactions.

Piggyback plans were developed as a creative response to soaring home prices and borrowers' desires to stretch their down-payment cash while avoiding private mortgage insurance premiums. In traditional financings, a borrower with less than a 20% down payment typically must pay for mortgage insurance premiums. In piggyback arrangements, by contrast, the borrower takes out a traditional mortgage for 80% of the property value, but simultaneously obtains a second lien for a portion or all of the balance — and avoids PMI payments.

Banks and other lenders offer a wide variety of piggyback options. For example, an "80-20" piggyback would require zero down payment — an 80% standard first mortgage and a credit line or second mortgage covering the 20% balance. An "80-10-10" would involve a 10% down payment; an "80-15-5," just 5% down.

With their low cash requirements and often-generous credit standards, piggybacks have been wildly popular among home purchasers during the last several years. According to a study by SMR Research Corp., piggybacks quadrupled their market share from 2001 to 2004. In a sample of loans in California markets, according to the SMR study, the percentage of piggybacks exceeded 60% in some cases.
...
One reason for the higher defaults: Though the interest rate on the first-lien mortgage may be fixed, many of the second liens in piggybacks have been floating-rate home equity credit lines. They are tied to short-term interest-rate movements, especially the prime rate, and are exposed to frequent payment increases as short-term rates rise. The Federal Reserve's steady drumbeat of quarter-point increases over the last year has weighed heavily on buyers who took out piggybacks in 2003 and 2004, when short-term rates were at near-record lows. They have been forced to refinance their loans or find the extra monthly income to pay for the rising costs on their credit lines.