Posts Tagged ‘mortgage’

Rent Control & price ceiling

Rent controls are a price ceiling intended to protect residents from high housing prices. Rent controls are currently in place in many U.S. cities, including New York, Washington, D.C., Newark, New Jersey, and San Jose, California. Most of these measures were enacted during either World War I1 or the 1970s, when inflation was high. Rent controls peaked in the mid-1980s. At that time, more than 200 cities, encompassing about 20 percent of the nation’s population, imposed rent controls.
Because rent controls push the price of rental housing below the equilibrium level, the amount of rental housing demanded by consumers will exceed the amount landlords will make available. Initially, if the mandated price is only slightly below equilibrium, the impact of rent controls may be barely noticeable. Over time, however, the effects will worsen. Inevitably, rent controls will lead to the following results.


The impact of price ceilings

At the lower price, the quantity supplied by producers decreases along the supply curve to Q , while the quantity demanded by consumers increases along the demand curve to Q,.    A shortage ~(e,- Q,) of the good will result because the quantity demanded by consumers exceeds the quantity supplied by producers at the new controlled price. After the price ceiling is imposed, the quantity of the good exchanged declines from the equilibrium quantity to Qs, and the gains from trade (consumer and producer surplus) fall as well. Normally, a higher price would ration the good to the buyers most willing to pay for it. Because the price ceiling keeps this from happening, though, other means must be used to allocate the smaller quantity Q, among consumers wanting to purchase Q,.    Predictably, nonprice factors will become more important in the rationing process. Sellers will be forced to discriminate on some basis other than willingness to pay as they ration their sales to eager buyers. They will be more inclined to sell their products to their friends, to buyers who do them favors, and even buyers willing to make illegal “under-the-table” payments. (The accompanying Applications in Economics box, “The Imposition of Price Ceilings During Hurricane Hugo,” highlights this point.) Time might also be used as the rationing device, with those willing to wait in line the longest being the ones able to purchase the good. In addition, the below-equilibrium price reduces the incentive of sellers to expand the future supply of the good. At the lower price, suppliers will direct resources away from production of the good and into other, more profitable areas. As a result, the product shortage will worsen through time.
What other secondary effects can be expected? In the real world, there are two ways that sellers can raise prices. First, they can raise their money price, holding quality constant. Or, second, they can hold the money price constant while reducing the quality of the good. (The latter might also include reducing the size of the product, say, for example, a candy bar or a loaf of bread.) Faced with a price ceiling, sellers will use quality reductions as a way to raise their prices. Because of the government-created shortage, many consumers will buy the lower quality good rather than do without it.
It is important to note that a shortage is not the same as scarcity. Scarcity is inescapable. Scarcity exists whenever people want more of a good than nature has provided. This means, of course, that almost everything of value is scarce. Shortages, on the other hand, are a result of prices being set below their equilibrium values prices are permitted to rise. Removing the price ceiling will allow the price to rise back to its equilibrium level. This will stimulate additional production, discourage consumption, and increase the incentive of entrepreneurs to search for and develop substitute goods. This combination of forces will eliminate the shortage.


Currency Trading

Some corporate Treasuries are run as a profit centre and thus this part will also be of interest to them. For the purpose of dividing currency activity into trading and hedging, we assume the generalization that corporate Treasury for the most part uses the currency market for hedging purposes. The aim here is to show how a currency market practitioner can combine the strategy techniques described in this blog for the practical use of trading or investing in currencies. Given that I focus primarily on the emerging market currencies, we will keep the focus to that sector of the currency market, though clearly these strategy techniques can and should be used for currency exposure generally. The example we use here is that of a recommendation I put out on January 10, 2002. The key point here is not just that the recommendation made or lost money, but also how the strategy was arrived at. The aim is not to copy this specific recommendation, but to be able to repeat the strategy method. Note that these types of currency strategies should be attempted solely by professional and qualified institutional investors or corporations.


Trend-Following Strategy

The idea behind this strategy is to go long the currency pair when the price is above a moving average of a given length and to go short the currency pair when it is below. Currency managers can choose different moving averages depending on their trading approach to the benchmark. Lequeux and Acar (1998) showed that to be representative of the various durations followed by investors, an equally weighted portfolio based on three moving averages of length 32, 61 and 117 days may be appropriate. If the spot exchange rate is above all three moving averages,hedge the foreign currency exposure 100%. If above two out of the three, hedge one-third of the position. In all other cases, leaves the position unhedged. Trend-following strategies have shown consistent excess returns over sustained periods of time.


Mortgage characteristics

Home mortgages are a relatively homogeneous product with the major difference being between fixed rate mortgages and those that are floating rate. Historical default rates across the world have generally been among the lowest of any asset class. There are a number of qualitative reasons why this is the case. Owner–occupiers have to live somewhere and their choice is usually between paying rent or making the mortgage payments; mortgages have a form of long-term option on property prices and given their typical term have significant time value. Mortgagors do not default simply because they have negative equity and this option is out-of-the-money. The personal consequences of defaulting on a mortgage are extreme and mortgagors will usually default only in extreme circumstances.
For default rates to rise sharply from their very low “normal” levels usually requires some combination of falling property prices, rising unemployment, falling wages and in the case of floating rate loans higher interest rates.
There are a few examples where mortgage default rates have soared and in recent years these have occurred in countries where there has been a form of managed foreign exchange system that has subsequently collapsed. Mortgagors who took out “cheaper” foreign currency loans found that the value and servicing costs of their loan in local currency terms shot up. Other factors such as falling property prices and higher unemployment also occurred in these cases but were of secondary importance.
In countries where mortgage securitization issues are common there is a wealth of data available on both default and loss rates. In the US these are available on a regional basis and can be analyzed by type of loan and borrower. Publicly available data in most other countries is either sparse or non-existent.
LIED rates vary with the remaining term on the loan and volatility of property prices. In the event of foreclosure banks usually act to sell the properties at auction.
Industry level statistics on home loans are less useful to specialist lenders focusing on segments where most lenders are not prepared to make loans. These include loans made where standard loan-to-value criteria are lowered (and this may be as a result of upfront subsidies on mortgagors’ legal and other costs), on older properties that are difficult to sell or to borrowers with an erratic earnings and employment history.
In some countries individuals may take out mortgages to purchase homes to let. These are riskier than loans to owner–occupiers and ability to meet payments is usually dependent on rental income. Such borrowers are at particular risk if they have taken out floating rate loans, interest rates rise and property prices and hence rental yields fall. Portfolio risks are particularly vulnerable to location concentration.


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