Why I Can’t Get a Mortgage
What does a guy have to do to get a home loan these days? asked Stephen Moore. I can make a 25 percent down payment. I’ve never missed a mortgage payment in 25 years. “I’m upper middle class.” Yet, every bank I go to, I’m denied as a “high-risk borrower.” Eight years ago, during “the go-go days of the real estate frenzy,” my loan would have been approved in a heartbeat. But thanks to Dodd-Frank’s meddling in lending rules, “the pendulum has swung to the other extreme,” and underwriting standards have become “absurdly tight.”
The main reason I’ve been denied is a below-average credit score, which infuriatingly is the result of just two late credit card payments in 30 years and $300 worth of unpaid parking tickets. “But here is why I really want to pull my hair out”: While my application is denied, my tax dollars subsidize hundreds of thousands of truly risky mortgages to people who are putting down as little as 3 percent. “These are the loans that will likely default.” Uncle Sam now backs a record number of new mortgages, with nearly 90 percent having some form of federal insurance. And yet I can’t get a loan? “Only in America.”
see also finance and business knowledge
