12 Million Homes Yet to Go Through Foreclosure

That’s what Laurie Goodman told the National Economists Club today in D.C. 7.2 million are already in the delinquency pipeline, and 250,000 are going delinquent each month bringing the total to 12 million. “Once you’re 60 days delinquent, a foreclosure is highly probable,” she said. Goodman is a Senior Managing Director of Amherst Securities and is widely recognized as the best housing finance economist on Wall Street.

She emphasized that negative equity is the main problem, and that any program which doesn’t significantly reduce principal won’t work. She estimated that under the most optimistic assumptions, President Obama’s HAMP program would avert 1.1 million foreclosures. Goodman added that banks aren’t renegotiating underwater mortgages in which they hold a second lien, “a huge conflict of interest problem.”

She noted that FHA loans are still the whole market and suggested that the homebuyer tax credit, due to expire at the end of this month, and other housing incentives have borrowed so much demand forward that the only way left to stimulate the market would be for FHA to ease its requirements and allow investors to participate.

Here is Goodman’s testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on December 8, 2009.

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About Pete Davis 99 Articles

Affiliation: Davis Capital Investment Ideas

Pete Davis advises Wall Street money managers on Washington policy developments that affect the financial markets. President of his own consulting firm since 1992, Davis Capital Investment Ideas, he draws on 11 years of experience as a Capitol Hill economist with the Joint Committee on Taxation (1974-1981), the Senate Budget Committee (1981-1983), and Senator Robert C. Byrd (1992). He worked in the House and Senate, and for Republicans and Democrats.

Davis brought the first computer policy model, the Treasury Individual Income Tax Model, to Capitol Hill in early 1974, when he became a revenue estimator on the Joint Committee on Taxation. He formulated the 1975 rebate, the earned income tax credit, the 1976 estate tax rates, the 1978 marginal tax rates, and the Roth-Kemp tax cut. He left Capitol Hill in 1983 for the Washington Research Office of Prudential-Bache Securities, where he advised investors for seven years.

Davis has long written a newsletter on the Washington-Wall Street connection for his clients; Capital Gains and Games is his first foray into the blogosphere.

Visit: Capital Gains and Games

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