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Executives and board members in financial services are increasingly held accountable for the actions of their firms. Among their many responsibilities, they are required in particular to be engaged in their company’s efforts to adhere to the letter and spirit of laws that seek to ensure consumer protection.
As the regulatory landscape facing executives in the financial services industry has grown increasingly complex – and integral to their enterprises and their firms’ reputations – so too has the need to demonstrate and document the actions taken by their firms.
Gate House Chairman and Partner Brian Montgomery recently outlined the challenges facing executives in a piece for HousingWire. As he argued, even with the best of intentions, there are often inconsistencies and conflicting interpretations of what firms need or ought to do — and what executives need or ought to in order to stay apprised of their firm’s efforts. One thing we know it that it will require vigilance and a lot of hard work to get it right.
Recognizing the important need in C-suites and executive board rooms, Gate House Strategies has launched a new subsidiary, Gate House Compliance, LLC, to provide fair lending and compliance management services. The firm, comprised of veterans in financial services and specialists in fair lending and consumer protection law and regulation (and support from CrossCheck Compliance’s deep bench of experts), will advise and support compliance regimes across multiple asset classes, including mortgage, student loan, credit card, and other secured and unsecured credit products.
The addition of Gate House Compliance is a timely and critical expansion of the firm’s ability to serve the growing needs of the industry. After careful examination, clients can choose services that complement their current compliance program, or on a subscription basis, they may utilize Gate House Compliance 365, a comprehensive system of ongoing support of fundamental services and a coordinated, dynamic approach to the management of regulatory risk.
The important policy goals our country require executives to be engaged. They need experience, perspective, and insight in order to do what is right and, and – when the path is made unclear by conflicting policies or interpretations – what is prudent for business.
The goal for Gate House Compliance is to put executives and firms ahead of the curve and ahead of the scrutiny that characterizes the current environment and road ahead. Vigilance and a team of experts with a steady hand will be a must.
Gate House Partner and Chairman Brian Montgomery shared his perspective on the regulatory landscape facing executives in the financial service industry — the need to act responsibly with respect to fair lending laws and to understand the complexity of it all – in a piece for Housing Wire.
“[M]ultiple agencies pursuing the same general goals sometimes creates inconsistencies or conflicting interpretations of policy, making it difficult for financial institutions to navigate uncharted waters, even with the best of intentions.” Montgomery wrote.
Montgomery, who served as Deputy Secretary of HUD and FHA Commissioner twice, emphasized the risks, particularly in the areas of lending and loan servicing: “Recent regulatory actions have targeted marketing practices, credit allocation and product offerings,” he said, with top executives more often being held accountable for their “company policies, procedures, operations, and culture.”
With risk to the firm not only financially but reputationally, the need to “identify gaps that may exist in their knowledge and experience and structure management teams accordingly” is paramount if they are to demonstrate to overseers that they possess a comprehensive approach to their compliance obligations.
Private industry participants have their work cut out for them as they go about the critical work of upholding the letter and spirit of our country’s fair lending laws, Montgomery said. Both private firms and government must work together at times, with private industry willing to serve as partners to government and the government for their part providing “transparency, open dialogue and technology improvements” to make our system work.
As anticipated, Chairman Powell maintained a rather hawkish tone Friday afternoon, citing unexpected economic strength in the third quarter as reason to stay vigilant on inflation. “We are attentive to signs that the economy may not be cooling as expected.” Powell said. The Fed, Powell said, is “prepared to raise rates further if appropriate and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective.”
JPMorgan Asset Management’s chief global strategist David Kelly said Powell wants to keep expectations open as they approach the September meeting. Kelly, however, says from his point of view the bigger risk for the Fed at this point is hiking again, as we don’t yet know the full, lagged effects of the Fed’s aggressive rate rises yet, and there is every reason to believe, Kelly argues, inflation is on its way down, citing recent global PMI numbers, new car prices falling this year, and rents stabilizing. JPMorgan expects we will be in the low 3s by the end of this year and 2% by end of next year. Kelly also said he believes it is nearly impossible to go into recession with 9.5 million job openings, a lingering effect of the pandemic that is helping to keep inflation lower.
Morgan Stanley’s Global Head of Corporate Credit Research Andrew Sheets said much the same on inflation: “Two key measures of underlying inflation, core PCE and core CPI, slowed sharply in the most recent reading.” Sheets said. He says car prices and rent—big drivers of high inflation last year—are now pointing in the opposite direction. Sheets also sights tightening bank credit and a moderation in job growth as a sign rates are restrictive enough for Morgan Stanley economists to believe the Fed is done this year.
On the bond market, Sheets also noted: “Since 1984, there have been five times where the Fed has ended interest rate hiking cycles after multiple increases. Each time the yield on the U.S. aggregate bond index peaked within a month of this last hike. In short, the Fed being done has been good for the U.S. Agg Bond Index.”
Perhaps in line, 30 year mortgage rates ticked further upward over the 7% level on tight housing supply, as Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) data indicated mortgage application activity drifted further downward to levels not seen in nearly three decades. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, said the future path of rates depends on 10-year Treasury yields and on what the Fed does at its Sept. 20 meeting. “We are at this critical juncture,” Yun said. “[Mortgage rates] can either break higher, up to 8 percent, or lower, to 6.5 percent.”
Meanwhile, Auction.com reported more than nine in 10 default servicing industry leaders expect completed foreclosure auction volume to increase this year compared to 2022, with 85 percent of those surveyed expecting home prices to decline in 2023 compared to 2022.
As mortgage rates hit a 22-year high and existing homeowners continue to stay in their homes, new single family home sales hit a 17-month high in July, according to HUD and U.S. Census Bureau data.
Last month’s data recorded a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 714,000 new single-family home sales, up 4.4% from the revised June rate of 684,000 and is 31.5% above the July 2022 estimate of 543,000. The median sales price of new houses sold in July 2023 was $436,700 and the average sales price was $513,000. First-time buyers now make up 50% of all buyers, up from 45% in 2022 and 37% in 2021.
Chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, Lawrence Yun, said he expects rates will begin decreasing by the end of the year, citing the Fed’s slowing of its interest rate increases. The Mortgage Bankers Association, said they expect the average 30-year mortgage rate to decrease to 5% by the fourth quarter of next year.
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley reiterated concerns for regional banks. Vishy Tirupattur, its Chief Fixed Income Strategist, said the firm does not accept a growing narrative that “the issues in the sector that erupted in March are largely behind us.” “The ratings downgrades by both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s,” Tirupattur said, “provide a reminder that the headwinds of increasing capital requirements, higher cost of funding and rising loan losses continue to challenge the business models of the regional banking sector.” While acknowledging that comment periods are open and changes could occur, on the heels of proposed rules around capital requirements, the Fed’s proposed capital rule on implementing capital surcharge for the eight U.S. global systemically important banks, and proposed regulations on new long term debt requirements for banks with assets of $100-700 billion, Tirupattur said “suffice to say that the documents envisage significantly higher capital requirement for much of the U.S. banking sector, and extends several large bank requirements to much smaller banks.”
In short, Morgan Stanley argues the result — supported by the latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion survey and a paper by the San Francisco Fed evaluating regulatory impacts on the real economy — is tighter credit going forward. “The bottom line is that more tightening lies ahead for the broader economy,” . …[and] “the evolution of regulatory policy can weigh on credit formation and overall economic growth.”
A report by Newmark in the Commercial Observer said debt origination volumes in the sector fell 52 percent year-over-year in the second quarter. They said there are also 32 percent fewer lenders than a year ago and lenders have grown “more selective in recent months, demanding lower loan-to-value ratios amid the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes.”
Additionally, the Washington Post ran a story this week about what is being referred to as the “urban doom loop” affecting midsized cities if commercial real estate headwinds persist. “The fear is that a commercial real estate apocalypse could spiral out and slow commerce, wrecking local tax revenue in the process. Midsize cities have some of the highest rates of office delinquency, where loan payments on buildings are behind schedule, and the lowest rates of office occupancy,” the Post reported. “The average delinquency rate across the 50 largest metro areas in the country is about 5 percent. But in places like Charlotte in North Carolina or Hartford in Connecticut, it is almost 30 percent, according to data from the real estate analytics company Trepp. Likewise, occupancy rates average about 87 percent. But in Oklahoma City, it is just 71 percent, and 76 percent in both Memphis and St. Louis.”
The Fed will be in Jackson Hole next week, where Chairman Jay Powell is expected to speak following the inflation read last week: CPI registered 3.2% through July, and was up a modest .2% from last month, though core inflation is still elevated in the high 4s. Many believe the moderation has validated the Fed’s posture. Continued U.S. economic strength extending into Q3, however, adds further uncertainty to their future course. While the surprising resilience of the U.S. economy, with low unemployment and consumer confidence holding up, has many believing there is room for a soft landing, it has also complicated the Fed’s job. The Fed has made it clear they need to see wage and price pressures subsiding, which could translate into keeping rates higher for longer. Nevertheless, there are cracks in the consumer story beginning to materialize, as we’ve discussed here.
Deutsche Bank’s Chief US Economist, Matthew Luzzetti, says he still expects a mild recession, despite a Q3 re-acceleration, which he says could be above 3% despite tighter bank lending standards. Luzzetti believes the Fed lag, credit tightening, and rising delinquency rates will take its toll, and expects a hawkish message out of Jackson Hole. Rising credit card balances, rising delinquencies, and slowing student loan repayments — down $7 billion — are also on his radar. As excess savings is being drawn down by consumers, there are also signs they are making trade-offs (services v. durable goods currently). So far, however, the U.S. consumer is hanging there.
We thought we’d mention two ratings downgrades that occurred recently. The first was by Fitch, which moved US Treasury debt lower by one level earlier this month. Fitch downgraded US sovereign rating from the top-ranked AAA to AA+ as a result of the government’s fiscal deterioration, following up one day later with a downgrade to the credit ratings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Fitch cited as an example a “marked increase in general government debt …due to a failure to address medium-term public spending and revenue challenges” “Over the next decade,” the Fitch report said, “higher interest rates and the rising debt stock will increase the interest service burden, while an aging population and rising healthcare costs will raise spending on the elderly absent fiscal policy reforms.”
This is only the second time U.S. debt has been downgraded, the first occurring in 2011 by Standard and Poor’s also after a debt ceiling negotiation. Republican Budget Committee members have been highly critical of Democrats on this score — saying they have only occurred under Presidents Obama and Biden — and arguing that this is a wake up call to address fiscal issues that have been glossed over in the debt-ceiling debates. In a statement, the Majority said if not addressed, the downgrades will affect the U.S.’s ability to “absorb a major financial shock in the future; and if we don’t change course, the U.S. will not only incur another credit downgrade, we will undermine the dollar as the global reserve currency.”
Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo of Goldman Sachs said this week she did not believe, at this point, the Fitch downgrades would have long term effects but in the nearer term it could cause an elevated debt burden to crowd out private investment and that’s that’s not good for long-term productivity of the economy.
In a move that brings regional banks and CRE back into focus, Moody’s cut the credit ratings of several small to mid-sized U.S. banks Monday and said it may downgrade some of the nation’s biggest lenders. They downgraded 10 banks by one level and placed six large banks, including Bank of New York Mellon, US Bancorp, State Street, and Truist Financial on review for potential downgrades. Moody’s said the sector’s credit strength is likely be tested by funding risks and weaker profitability.
Goldman Sach’s Ashish Shah said the Moody’s downgrade is “reflective of the information we learned in March… the challenges to regional banks business model” and the fact that the commercial real estate (CRE) stress is at a real issue. CRE “continues to be a real thing that is playing out,” Shah agued. Shah added, however, that he does not believe the issue of asset valuation in CRE necessarily bleeds into the real economy, though it creates risk.
In their recent article for Reverse Mortgage Daily, Gate House Founding Partners Brian Montgomery, Keith Becker and Dror Oppenheimer discuss the implications of the first positive capital ratio for the HECM program in six years.
The Gate House team, who worked together at the Federal Housing Administration managing the HECM program, provided their unique perspective and explained that important policy changes, and most certainly strong home price appreciation, have contributed to the substantial improvement in the HECM capital ratio.
Nevertheless, they argued, the results do not “provide a reason for complacency or assurance of future (positive) results” and therefore continued vigilance to ensure the program “is not continuously subsidized by the premiums … in the forward book, will be vital for the HECM program to continue to serve its mission.”
Montgomery is the only person to have served as FHA Commissioner twice under three presidents. Becker served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Chief Risk Officer for FHA. Oppenheimer served as a Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of FHA.
Eyes will be on inflation data coming out this week. The news on that front has been trending positive and suggests the Fed is nearing the end of the rate hiking cycle.
As we’ve been discussing here, the second quarter was strong and the third quarter appears to be holding up on the consumer front as well, as the jobs market softens slightly and corporate earnings weaken (as firms lose pricing power with supply chains are repaired). Unemployment remains at 3.5%, good for consumers but possibly also a source of wage pressure that keeps the Fed inclined to hold rates higher for longer. Though commodity declines in recent months have also been a boon, a recent pop in oil prices complicates the picture.
Joel Kahn of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) summarizes it well: “The incoming economic data continue to convey conflicting signals about the strength of the economy. Indicators of manufacturing and service sector health remain lackluster, measures of inflation have moved lower, while GDP growth in the second quarter was stronger than expected and consumer spending remains resilient.”
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley’s Michelle Weaver says no less than 1% of mortgages are in the money for refinance after millions jumped on the opportunity of low rates during the pandemic. The effect [of homeowners remaining in homes with lower rates and reducing existing supply] has made it tough for first time homebuyers who have had to remain renters, and has put upward pressure on rents, Waiver said on the Morgan Stanley podcast “Thoughts on the Market.” Her colleague Jim Egan noted that existing single family housing inventories are at 40 years lows and “We say ’40 year lows’ because that’s just as far back as the data goes, this is the lowest we’ve seen that,” Egan said.
Egan also argued that “while affordability is bad, it’s not getting worse” and is likely to improve, and “while supply is tight, it’s not getting tighter”—he believes we are stuck in a range for a while. Egan said while the Case-Shiller index turned negative this year for the first time since 2012, Morgan Stanley forecasts prices will be unchanged over the coming year. And as JPMorgan’s Michael Cembalest pointed out in his recent “Eye on the Market” podcast, the tight supply of existing homes has made the market more resilient to to rising rates. Consumers, however, are continuing to burn off savings, which might run out in 2024, Cembalest said. JPMorgan sees weakness possible for Q4/Q1, with economic growth down to 1%.
On that consumer front, credit card balances continue to climb, the Fed reported, with total indebtedness rising $45 billion in the April-through-June period, an increase of more than 4% — and taking the total amount owed to over $1 trillion, the highest gross value in Fed data going back to 2003. Total household debt rose $16 billion to $17.06 trillion, also a record. Fed researchers said the rise in balances reflects both inflationary pressures as well as higher levels of consumption. The Fed said its measure of credit card debt 30 or more days late rose to 7.2% in the second quarter, up from 6.5% in Q1, which is the highest rate since the first quarter of 2012 (though close to the long-run average). Total debt delinquency rose slightly 3.18% from 3%.
We’ve talked about commercial office challenges facing the market in the many months ahead. A report in the Wall Street Journal is also sounding an alarm on multifamily apartment owners. While vacancy rates are low and rents are high, some owners saddled themselves with too much debt as rents rose, often borrowing more than 80% of the building value from bond markets, the Journal reported. Though most apartment loans are fixed-rate, long-term mortgages, more investors took shorter-term, floating-rate loans during the pandemic. The surge in debt costs last year “threatens multifamily owners across the country,” the Journal said.
CoStar said apartment-building values fell 14% for the year ended in June after rising 25% the previous year, roughly the same as the fall in office values. And although mortgage delinquencies in the multifamily category are low, they are increasing, the Journal reports: “Borrowing costs have doubled, rent growth is slowing and building expenses are rising…Outstanding multifamily mortgages more than doubled over the past decade to about $2 trillion, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is nearly twice the amount of office debt, according to Trepp. The data provider adds that $980.7 billion in multifamily debt is set to come due between 2023 and 2027.”
As the market was expecting, the Fed raised interest rates another quarter point Wednesday afternoon, bringing the federal-funds rate to a range between 5.25% and 5.5%, a 22 year high. There will be eight weeks until the next Fed meeting.
Chairman Jay Powell said there is “uncertainty in the next meeting let alone next year.” Powell also said he believed they “have a shot” at a soft landing in the economy — the ability to achieve inflation reduction without high levels of job loss as has occurred in many past instances of tightening. We’ve been hearing this from some (not all) Wall Street economists more recently, but during the press conference Powell also revealed the independent staff at the Fed is now no longer forecasting a recession, given recent strength in the economy.
Asked directly about the housing market and the prospect of getting supply and demand back into balance, Powell said, citing the constraint of existing homes, “I think we have a ways to go to get back to balance” given that existing homeowners with low rate mortgages see “too much value in their mortgage,” keeping supply tight and continuing to pressure prices. On the other hand, Powell said, even in this rate environment there are a significant number of new buyers. “Hopefully,” Powell said, “more supply comes online” and “we are still living with through aftermath of the pandemic.”
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said high mortgage rates and low existing inventory led to another annual increase in new home purchases in June. Mortgage applications for new home purchases jumped 26.1% in June from the same period last year, according to the MBA’s builder application survey. Compared with the prior month, applications dropped by 5%, MBA said.
Housing Wire reported that construction of single-family homes specifically designed as rentals is booming. However, there are several states bucking that trend due to regulatory constraints that make investment less attractive.
The shift in commercial real estate since the pandemic — decreased office occupancy and retail activity coupled with higher interest rates — has put the CRE sector under continued strain. That stress has caused banks and other lenders to tighten their standards for new loans and scrutinize existing ones. Reuters reports that big banks are increasing loan loss reserves for commercial real estate although their exposure is relatively low. “While regional banks carry the greatest exposure to the (CRE sector,” Reuter said, “second quarter earnings show that a number of big banks have prepared for potential defaults, primarily on office loans.”
Mortgage and housing trade groups meanwhile this week objected to the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) proposal to designate nonbank servicers and others as systemically-important financial institutions. MBA said in a letter response that FSOC’s proposed interpretive guidance and a revised analytical framework “signal a renewed effort by the Biden Administration and federal financial services regulators to target non-bank financial companies – including non-bank mortgage servicers – for SIFI designation and subject them to Federal Reserve prudential oversight.”
MBA also reported that Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) may vote Thursday on the interagency proposed changes to capital requirements for banks with assets of $100 billion or more, which may include an increase in residential mortgage capital requirements for large depository banks. “This is disconcerting,” MBA said, “as large increases in capital standards will likely lead to a shift in where mid-sized and regional banks will focus their core businesses and reduce credit availability for all types of lending, including for single-family, multifamily, and commercial real estate.”
It’s a busy week for housing data. The National Association of Homebuilder’s (NAHB) reported its sentiment index rose by 1 point to 56, the seventh straight month of gains and the highest level since June 2022 (> 50 is considered positive) as low supply of existing homes for sale continues to drive demand for new construction. Housing starts and building permits are due out, along with existing home sales, jobless claims, and leading U.S. economic indicators.
The Federal Reserve released the results of its consumer survey, revealing that the rejection rate for people applying for credit jumped to 21.8% in June, up from 17.3% in February, the highest level in five years. Credit applications it should be noted, however, have fallen overall the past 12 months to 40.3%, the lowest since October 2020 and down from 40.9% in February, according to the survey. Nevertheless, big banks have said they are setting aside additional capital for loan losses as credit card balances rise and delinquency rates on credit cards and other retail loans continue to rise. Broken down, the Fed survey revealed the rejection rate for auto loans increased the most, to 14.2 percent from 9.1 percent in February, a new series high. For credit cards, credit card limit increase requests, mortgages, and mortgage refinance applications, rates rose to “21.5 percent, 30.7 percent, 13.2 percent, and 20.8 percent, respectively.”
Even as the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage neared the 7% mark, preliminary results from the University of Michigan survey indicate consumer sentiment rose 13% in July, which if it holds would be the second straight month of improvement and the largest over-month gain since 2006 and its highest level since September 2021.
Black Knight’s analysis suggests a bifurcated market. Andy Walden, vice president of enterprise research and strategy, said “The housing market has been reheating as we approach the traditional tail end of the homebuying season.” But credit continues to tighten, Waldron said, and in a constrained market, which has purchases taking a larger share of a reduced origination market, “continued economic uncertainty, tightening credit and affordability concerns have all helped to skew the market toward higher-credit borrowers. In fact, the average credit score among purchase locks hit a record high in June.” “Likewise, the average purchase price rising for the seventh straight month while the average loan amount remained flat suggests lower loan-to-value ratios as well” Waldron said.
According to an analysis by Realtor.com, in this interest rate environment and with the Fed likely to tighten further, they expect home sales to decline by 15.8% for the year, as many potential buyers wait for rates to drop before they are willing to look for a new home. Realtor.com says would-be sellers with existing low rates on their mortgages are holding off, unwilling to enter a market where they would pay a higher rate. Realtor.com also changed its outlook for prices: After forecasting a price rise earlier this year, they now expect a gradual fall in the second half of the year.
Also of note, issuance of agency mortgage-backed securities rebounded strongly in the second quarter of 2023 following nine consecutive quarters of slumping production.
With U.S. 30-year fixed mortgage rates touching an average of 6.81% this week, the highest yet for 2023 according to Freddie Mac’s mortgage market survey, and despite tightening credit and signs consumers are already pulling back, low unemployment is creating the likelihood consumers can and will continue to spend over the next two quarters, keeping the prospect of a soft landing alive. That said, corporate earnings in the coming weeks will give us a better indication of whether that more optimistic narrative will be disrupted by multifaceted pressures and risks presented by persistent core inflation, higher interest rates, smaller bank liquidity concerns, and commercial office space contraction.
Citing the low unemployment figures and relatively strong job openings, UBS says they believe the US consumer can continue to spend through 2023, citing household DTI at 40 year lows, many households with debt fixed at low rate mortgages, and household wealth doubling in last decade, creating $10 trillion in wealth. With home prices up 40% from pre-Covid levels, UBS said even though savings is down recently it will likely remain positive through 2023 and into 2024, assisted by real wage growth (though also trending down) and the fact that lower income wages have been growing faster than higher income — all complicating the Fed’s job but nevertheless offering a less painful storyline for the rest of the year.
MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni still forecasts a slowing economy over the next two quarters with a recovery in early 2024, nevertheless he expects the Fed will tighten again later this month: “The June employment report reinforces that forecast,” Fratantoni said. “While job growth and wage growth are trending down, both are still well above the pace that would be consistent with the Federal Reserve’s inflation target. We now expect that the FOMC will raise the federal funds target another 25 basis points at its July meeting.”
Goldman Sachs’ chief US economist believes the rebalancing of the labor market, with declining job openings and increased labor supply (closing a large gap that has existed between demand for labor and diminished workforce participation) without increasing unemployment is healthy for the economy and means less inflationary wage pressure.
Although core inflation has remained stubbornly high, near term inflation expectations and business inflation expectations have both moderated. Alleviation of the worst of pandemic supply chain shortages is also helping to bring down inflation, and relief in commodity prices are not believed to have passed through yet, Goldman Sachs said. An increased supply of rental units in housing, notably, has also not worked its way into inflation numbers either. Shelter is the largest category in inflation by weighting, and the Goldman Sachs team believes it will soon take an estimated 2-2.5% off the CPI, forecasting inflation to be down to the high 3s by end of year, the low to mid 2s next year, before achieving the Fed target 2% by 2025.