Preview

Subprime Mortgage Crisis Essay Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
528 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Subprime Mortgage Crisis Essay Example
Subprime Mortgage Crisis

The subprime mortgage crisis is foreclosures of the U.S housing market which began in late 2006 until present day. Prior to 2006, the housing market seemed to be going up for long time. Noticing this trend, borrowers think that everything was fine and refinancing will solve any future problems. In 2006-2007, the housing market moderately cooled down. Many unable to refinance because of higher interest rate of Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM), found themselves in a deep bind. Massive defaults and foreclosures soon followed.
By definition subprime mortgage is giving loans to borrowers who typically are not qualified because of their higher risks: income level, work status, and credit history. This also puts the borrowers into a higher rate category than the prime rate. In March 2007, the U.S value subprime mortgage is about $1.3 trillion; $7.5 million of that is bad.
There are many contributing factors that cause the subprime mortgage crisis: slump of the housing market, role of borrowers, role of financial institutions, etc. The most visible of them all is the housing market crisis. Unable to pay mortgages, millions of borrowers’ houses face repossession. Part of the cause of the housing crisis is consumerism. Elevated by yours truly, President George W. Bush who ask American to spend more to get out of economic slowdown. Another problem includes over building during economic boom period, this creates surplus supply that many homeowners are not willing to sell at a lower market prices.
High-risk borrowers ability to obtained easy credit and speculation of rising housing market, fueled the housing boom. Some compelled to resort into fraud. 1,411% increase of fraudulent behavior reported by the U.S Department of Treasury between the years of 1997 to 2005.
Financial institutions are also to blame for the crisis. Eager to grow their industry in the name of profits, they were willing to provide high-risk loan options and incentives.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Giant Pool of Money

    • 299 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The mortgage crisis was a result of too much borrowing and flawed financial modeling, largely based on the assumption that home prices only go up. Greed and fraud and easy money also played important parts before the mortgage crisis.…

    • 299 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The housing crisis can be summarized as the over evaluation of house values in the late 90’s and early 2000’s,and shortly there after peoples mortgage debt became larger than the decreasing value of their home come 2006. Sub-prime loans can also be blamed; I will further discuss predatory lending techniques. One type of predatory lending practice that mortgage companies will use is to emphasize the payment. When this happens the lender focuses on a numerical monthly payment that you are able to afford. The down side to this car salesmen like approach, is that the details of the monthly payment can be skewed to hurt you down the road in the future while appearing like a good deal in the near future.…

    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Housing Market Crisis

    • 2136 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Jaffee, D. The U.S. Subprime Mortgage Crisis: Issues Raised and Lessons Learned. [online] World Bank. Available at: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2010/12/01/000333038_20101201234552/Rendered/PDF/577270NWP0Box353766B01PUBLIC10gcwp028web.pdf…

    • 2136 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Subprime Mortgage loans did contribute to the bubble and crash but they were just the cards played by the government and the policies that rule them. The department of housing and urban development was pushing national homeownership since 1995 and the doing away with down payments. This was a big problem because everyone started riding the coat-tails of these MBS’s and credit started loosening drastically. After this boom, the housing department then adopted mandates for the government enterprises that issue these securities, Fannie and Freddie. Springing from 342 billion in 1997 to 741 billion a year later was this new issuance of MBSs and the beginning to bubble burst. Because the GSEs believed that the government would protect them from any losses due to the implicit guarantee from it, they continued on issuing these loans to the country. Bringing the idea that everyone and anyone could finance a home caused demand to rise and so did house prices. Along with these initial mandates, lowering of credit scores and increasing allowable debt for borrowers came in 2000 by the HUD. From 469 billion in 2000 to 2.2 trillion in2003 shows how the housing bubble with these government backed securities, toxins, just kept being pumped into the market and would soon be gone.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Foreclosure Crisis

    • 1262 Words
    • 6 Pages

    References: Mark H Adelson, David P Jacob. (2008). The Subprime Problem: Causes and Lessons. Journal of Structured Finance, 14(1), 12-17,4.…

    • 1262 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Learning about the subprime lending scheme made me think about when I first bought a house. Lenders are pressured to get people into loans that they don’t qualify for. They also put people in adjustable rate mortgages in which people with not so good credit get a great interest rate to begin with but then go up after a certain period, usually about two years. This caused a lot of foreclosures because…

    • 533 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Jaffe, Dwight M (2008) The US Subprime Mortgage Crisis: Issues Raised and Lessons Learnt. Working Paper No. 28, Commission of Growth and Development, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank.…

    • 1746 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    Rise and Fall Housing Market

    • 2385 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The term bubble has been used synominously with the housing crisis. What is a bubble? According to the Webster dictionary an economic bubble is, “a state of booming economic activity that often ends in a sudden collapse.” American economist Robert Shiller of Yale University describes an economic bubble as “A bubble occurs when exaggerated expectations of future prices increase unusual demand either by people who fear being priced out of a market or by investors hoping to make a lot of money fast. A bubble is a self-fulfilling prophecy for a while, as successive rounds of buyers push prices higher and higher. But the willingness to pay higher and higher prices in fragile: It will end whenever buyers perceive that prices are no longer going up. Hence bubbles carry the seeds of their own destruction. Only time is needed for bubbles to end.” While there are many variations defining a bubble, all are consistent that there will be a “pop” or end to the bubble.…

    • 2385 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    The government’s promotion of subprime mortgages created more problems that assistance. It was the initial cause of the 2008 financial crisis due to the rise in delinquencies and foreclosures. Basically many people were approved for houses that were not financially stable or capable of the long term obligation of buying a home. As subprime lending expanded, so did the crisis due to the over-regulation, deregulation and failed regulation that the government brought…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sub-prime loans are known as mortgage loans that have been made to borrowers with low credit ratings (Davis, 2008). Sub-prime mortgage crisis was performed through a sophisticated modern financial instruments, known as securitization. In essence, securitization is the process of raising capital by using the assets available on the balance sheet as collateral to issue debt securities.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    From the late 1990s until the mid 2000s, the U.S. housing market experienced a tremendous boom, which ultimately ended up a disastrous bubble. A major change in how lenders provided mortgages led to more money available to non-prime borrowers. Many of these mortgages had unfavorable terms for the borrowers including high interest rates and unaffordable monthly payments. Soon, borrowers were unable to pay their mortgages and were forced to foreclose on their homes. A rise in foreclosures caused a ripple effect through financial markets supported by mortgage-backed securities (MBS), culminating in a worldwide financial crisis.…

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Mortgage Crisis

    • 1815 Words
    • 8 Pages

    There are four major factors involved in the mortgage crisis. The starting point of the whole crisis was the false bubble created when lenders allowed sub-prime borrowers to secure loans without a fallback policy of what would happen in case of a default. Loans were given without proper regulations and borrowers were given amounts of their loans than would be considered “safe” by any financial analyst. Thus, when the economy started to decline and the real estate bubble increased, the number of foreclosures began to rise (Cuneo, 2008).…

    • 1815 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

    • 1796 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The financial crisis of 2008 is considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. First signs of the crisis started to show in 2007 when the price of houses started to fall rapidly in the United States and then around the world. This financial crisis resulted in the failure of many large US financial institutions, banks to be bailout by the United States government, and the stock markets around the world were affected. One of the major issues leading to the financial crisis was the rising default on subprime lending. Large financial institutions were in completion with each other for revenue and market share,…

    • 1796 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The defaults on sub-prime mortgages (homeloan defaults) have led to a major crisis in the US. Sub-prime is a high risk debt offered to people with poor credit worthiness or unstable incomes. Major banks have landed in trouble after people could not pay back loans (See: Subprime pain: Who lost how much)…

    • 885 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    main reasons that led the housing market bubble to fall and cause over most homes in San…

    • 856 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays