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Dr. Mark J. Perry of CARPE DIEM Oct 6, 2008 Email this article to a Friend  Printer friendly page

Lessons To Learn From Mortgage Lending in Australia:

Maybe only a friendly foreigner could say this. But America needs to realize that not everyone can own a home. The American Dream of home ownership for all is a fraud. Politicians who pimped this dream created an unsustainable mortgage industry whose collapse is only surprising because it didn't happen earlier. America's mortgage industry will not recover, nor deserve to recover, unless it is prepared to challenge this politically unpalatable reality.

Now, Australians - and others - place a high value on homeownership too. But they are aghast at the dumb things America has tolerated in pursuit of that goal. Even more dumbfounding is that nobody in Washington seems to be talking about fixing it.

~Editorial in today's WSJ by Australian journalist

The editorial points out some significant differences between mortgage lending in the U.S. and Australia - the U.S. has nonrecourse, 30-year fixed rate mortgage loans, typically without prepayment penalties, and we also passed the CRA, and all of these uniquely American features of mortgage lending serve to "stack the cards against lenders and in favor of risky homeownership." And it's safe to say that all or most of these pro-borrower, anti-lender mortgage policies in the U.S. are government-mandated.

In contrast, mortgage loans in Australia are recourse, so "When Australians borrow money to buy a house, they know that if they default and the mortgaged property doesn't cover the debt, they will be responsible for the shortfall. And the lender will chase them for it. It's a neat way of reminding Australians to borrow responsibly."

Australian mortgages have either variable rates of interest, or fixed rates for periods of a maximum of five years, and they face a prepayment penalty when refinancing a mortgage to compensate the lender for the "lost interest the loan would have brought in had it been carried to term."

Bottom Line: One part of fixing our credit crisis is to consider reversing the pro-borrower, anti-lender mortgage policies in the U.S. Moving towards the Australian system would go a long way towards solving our mortgage troubles, and would stabilize our credit market and banking system and make them less vulnerable to credit shocks in the future.

by Dr. Mark J. Perry (CARPE DIEM)

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