No “Mortgage Meltdown,” but ...

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Respected real estate columnist Kenneth Harney today takes issue with conventional wisdom that there has been a ‘mortgage meltdown’ that has made mortgage money harder to come by. ‘Mortgage money is plentiful,’ he writes, ‘ the majority of mortgage products remain relatively unaffected by troubles in the sub-prime segment.’

Point taken. But if you read Harney’s column, he notes numerous ways in which mortgage credit is much harder to get than it was at the beginning of the year:
--’products and underwriting that allowed people to buy houses they couldn’t afford have disappeared.’
--’underwriting standards are stricter than they were a year ago.’
--’Jumbo loans ... often require two appraisals -- one by an appraiser selected by the lender and the other by the investor.’
--FICO score standards generally are higher than a year ago
--Stated-income mortgages with no verifications are hard to find.

In other words, a lot of mortgage products HAVE been affected by troubles in the sub-prime segment.

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