Bank Risk Managers: Home Prices Won't Recover Until 2020

An interview of bank risk managers by Julie Crawshaw this past week on Moneynews.com revealed the sentiment that home prices are unlikely to recover before 2020 and mortgage defaults will persist for years.

The Professional Risk Managers’ International Association latest quarterly survey of bank risk professionals done for Fair Isaac Corporation shows that bankers expect delinquencies on consumer loans to rise, underwriting standards to become stricter, and the housing sector to continue struggling far into the future.

“Housing has been an enormous drag on the economy for over three years as U.S. households lost trillions of dollars in equity,” said Dr. Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer at FICO and head of FICO Labs.

“While the housing sector will almost certainly gain strength during the next nine years, many bankers clearly believe prices will remain depressed for half a generation." "This puts the devastation of the housing crash into perspective.”

Among bankers surveyed, 49 percent said that recovery would not occur until 2020 and 73 percent believed mortgage defaults would remain elevated for at least five more years.

Furthermore, 46 percent of respondents expected mortgage delinquencies to increase over the next six months, and only 15 percent of respondents believed mortgage delinquencies will decline during that period. Only 15 percent of respondents expect mortgage delinquencies to decline during that period.

Housing prices nationwide could keep falling and might not bottom out for years, says Yale Professor and housing expert Robert Shiller.

In February, Shiller said housing prices could still fall 10 percent to 25 percent in real terms before hitting bottom. He recently told Yahoo’s The Daily Ticker he's standing by the prediction, adding that the economic big picture is looking worse. "I think the economic situation looks more precarious now," says Shiller, one of the authors of the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which was down 4.1 percent year-on-year in July although up from previous months earlier this year.

My comments: These type of stories always intrigue me for the sheer fact of how superficial and incomplete reporting has become. The sentiment is interesting and accurate, on the surface. However, one of the most important details; What is the risk managers definition of “recovery”, was omitted. Does “recovery” mean that prices will regain the highs of 2005? Does it mean simply that 2020 is when they think prices will stop declining and resume a historical rate of modest appreciation?

And housing is inherently local in nature…while some markets may not “recover” until well after 2020…some have already neared a bottom.

Here in Palm Beach County, with about 50% of all homes with mortgages already in a negative equity position (under water) and a non-existent job recovery, wed are going to have continued mortgage defaults and distressed sales (short sales and bank-owned sales)…which will, in turn, continue the cycle of increasing the percentage of properties in a negative equity position and increasing the probability of further defaults.

I can guarantee, unless we have serious inflation, that 2020 will NOT bring back the good old days of 2005…and inflation may not even accomplish it without serious and stable job growth.

Thanks for reading…Steve Jackson