U.S. Warns Lenders To Elevate Standards; Agencies Cite Risks In Home Equity Loans
Federal banking regulators yesterday warned banks and other lenders to be more selective about who can get home equity loans and lines of credit because rising interest rates may make it harder for people to repay their loans.</br></br>Government officials said that while mortgage defaults remain rare, many institutions are loading up on high-risk loans.</br></br>They urged lenders to review interest-only loans, which allow borrowers to delay principal payments for years, and "no-doc" loans, which don't require documenting borrowers' assets and income. They also suggested that lenders that refuse to do so may find themselves facing heightened federal oversight.</br></br>For consumers, it could become tougher to get some kinds of home equity loans, such as those that amount to 100 percent of a home's value. "It may curtail the appetite of some lenders for taking risks and if it does, it would reduce the credit supply to some consumer groups," said Douglas G. Duncan, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association.</br></br>"I think this is a policy that's long overdue," said John H. Vogel Jr., a professor of real estate at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University. "We've built an entire housing finance structure based on the belief that housing will always keep going up, and people are using home equity loans with the assumption they can always repay them when they sell their houses at an increased value."