Subprime mortgage lending in New York City: prevalence and performance

Subprime mortgage lending expanded in New York City between 2004 and mid-2007, and delinquencies on these subprime loans have been rising sharply. We use a rich, loan-level data set of the city's outstanding subprime loans as of January 2009 to describe the main features of this lending and to model the performance of these loans. These subprime loans represent a smaller share of total housing units in the city than is true nationwide. In addition, they are found to be clustered in neighborhoods where average borrower credit quality is low and, unlike prime mortgage loans, where African-Americans and Hispanics constitute relatively large shares of the population. We estimate a model of the likelihood that these loans will become seriously delinquent and find a significant role for credit quality of borrowers, debt-to-income and loan-to-value ratios at the time of loan origination, and estimates of the loss of home equity.Subprime mortgage ; Financial risk management ; Consumer credit ; Demography

Second chances: subprime mortgage modification and re-default

Mortgage modifications have become an important component of public interventions designed to reduce foreclosures. In this paper, we examine how the structure of a mortgage modification affects the likelihood of the modified mortgage re-defaulting over the next year. Using data on subprime modifications that precede the government's Home Affordable Modification Program, we focus our attention on those modifications in which the borrower was seriously delinquent and the monthly payment was reduced as part of the modification. The data indicate that the re-default rate declines with the magnitude of the reduction in the monthly payment, but also that the re-default rate declines relatively more when the payment reduction is achieved through principal forgiveness as opposed to lower interest rates.Subprime mortgage ; Foreclosure ; Default (Finance)