Who’s got the mortgage credit risk?

Published in Housing Finance International Journal:

The government-centric U.S. system

I have long thought that for any housing finance system which decides to make 30-year fixed rate loans, the Danish mortgage system has created the best division of the main component risks: credit risk and interest rate risk (which includes prepayment risk). The Danish system has a far better division of risk bearing than the government-dominated, taxpayers-at-risk U.S. system.

This was made strikingly clear to me in the year 2000, when thanks to the International Union for Housing Finance (of which I was then the President), I participated in a meeting in Copenhagen in which the Danish mortgage banks presented their covered bond system, and I presented the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-based American mortgagebacked securities (MBS) system. I explained how these so-called “GSEs” or “government-sponsored enterprises” worked, how they were the dominant powers in the huge U.S. mortgage market, and how they protected their government-granted financial power with impressive political clout.

At the conclusion of our discussion, the CEO of one of the large Danish mortgage lenders made this unforgettable observation:

“You know, we always say that here in Denmark we are the socialists, and that America is the land of free markets. But now I see that in mortgages, it is exactly the opposite!”

He was so right, especially with respect to American mortgage credit risk, which had become, and still is, heavily concentrated in Fannie and Freddie and thus in Washington DC.

A fundamental characteristic of the American MBS system is that the bank or other lender that makes a mortgage loan quickly sells it to Fannie or Freddie and divests the credit risk generated by its own customer, its own credit judgment, and its own loan. The loan with all its credit risk moves to Fannie or Freddie, totally away from the actual lender which dealt with the borrower. To compensate Fannie and Freddie for taking over the credit risk, the lender must pay them a monthly fee for the life of the loan, which for a prudent and skillful lender, is many times the expected loss rate on the mortgage credit.

Why would the actual lender do this, especially if it believes in its own credit judgment? In America, it does so because it wishes to get the loan financed in the bond market, so it can escape the interest rate risk of a 30-year fixed rate, prepayable, loan.

But the two risks do not necessarily need to be kept together – to divest the interest rate risk you do not in principle need to divest the credit risk, too. The brilliance of the Danish housing finance system is that it gets 100% of the of the interest rate risk of the 30-year fixed rate, prepayable loan financed in the bond market, but the original mortgage lender retains 100% of the credit risk for the life of the loan and gets a fee for doing so. The interest rate risk is divested to bond investors; the credit risk and related income stays with the original private lender. This division of risks, in my judgment, is clearly superior to that of the American system, and results in a far better alignment of incentives to make good loans in the first place

After our most interesting symposium in Denmark, how did the MBS system of the U.S. work out? The risk chickens come home to roost in the US. Treasury. In 2008, both Fannie and Freddie failed from billions in bad loans. They both were bailed out by the Treasury, as being far “too big to fail.” All their creditors, including subordinated debt holders, were fully protected by the bailout, although the stockholders lost 99% from the share price top to the bottom. Fannie and Freddie were both forced into a government conservatorship, which means a government agency is both regulator and exercises all the authority of the board of directors. They became owned principally by the government through the Treasury’s purchase of $190 billion in preferred stock. In addition, the Treasury obtained an option to acquire 79.9% of their common stock for a tiny fraction of one cent per share.

In short, from government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie and Freddie were made into government-owned and government-controlled enterprises (so I call them “GOGCEs”). So they remain in 2024. The government likes having total control of them in political hands, the Treasury likes the profits it currently receives as the majority owner, and no change is anywhere in sight.

While having become part of the government, Fannie and Freddie have maintained their central and dominant role in the U.S. housing finance system. The actual lenders are still divesting the credit risk of their own loans to the GOGCEs. Mortgage credit risk is still concentrated in Washington DC. My mortgage market contacts tell me that Fannie and Freddie’s old arrogance has returned. The two at the end of 2023 represented the remarkable sum of $6.9 trillion of residential mortgage credit risk.

To this huge number, to see the full extent of the U.S. government’s domination of mortgage credit risk, we have to add in Ginnie Mae. Ginnie is a 100% governmentowned corporation, which guarantees MBS formed from the loans of the U.S. government’s official subprime lender, the Federal Housing Administration, and of the Veterans Administration. It guarantees $2.5 trillion in mortgage loans.

Thus, in total, Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie represent about $9.4 trillion or 67% of the $14 trillion total U.S. residential mortgages outstanding. Two-thirds of the mortgage credit risk is ultimately a risk for the taxpayers. In Denmark, in notable contrast, all the credit risk of the mortgage bond market is held by the private mortgage banks.

Can it make any sense to have two-thirds of the entire mortgage credit risk of the country guaranteed by the government and the taxpayers? No, it can’t. The GOGCE-based MBS system can only result in political pressures to weaken credit standards and in excess house price inflation. This is not the system or the risk distribution the U.S. should have, but it is politically hard to get out of it.

The current U.S. MBS system is, I believe, the path-dependent result of the anomalous evolution of American housing finance in the wake of the 1980s collapse of the old savings and loans, combined with the lobbying force of the complex of housingrelated industries. Danish housing finance has superior risk principles, but we in America are unfortunately stuck with our government-centric system.