The real difficulty is that the value of many of the assets that as soon as backed up the debt securities held by these banks have fallen so dramatically. This was bound to happen when the banks started taking benefit of the Federal Reserve's artificially low interest rates to start giving loans to individuals who would never be able to pay them back.
Values were inflated by every person involved within the actual estate transaction and everybody went along with the myth. Borrowers wanted to get in on a bubble economy and had been willing to finance 100% of the purchase cost, realizing they could just sell in a year or two and make a huge profit.
Real estate agents knew that the value of the home and its sales cost would determine their commission.
Mortgage brokers knew that their pay (through commissions, fees, yield spread interest) would be based on the loan amount.
Appraisers knew that if they failed to appraise a household for the maximum marginally-plausible quantity, they would get no further small business from banks or mortgage brokers.
Banks knew that the bigger the mortgage, the a lot more the debt security could be worth. And they also knew that, if the owners fell behind on their loan they could just refinance or sell and take their profits. As well as if they did not sell, the bank could foreclose and sell it later on and take the profits of the inflating bubble for themselves.
When defaults began to rise and values started to fall, the dodgy debts became entirely worthless. Individuals who can not pay a mortgage on a property with an inflated value can sell. Individuals who can not pay a mortgage on a property that is underwater are forced into foreclosure unless they are able to function with their lender.
Values have fallen in real estate, but sellers can not list their properties for sale when the mortgage is 150% of the current market value of the house. If they want to make an effort to sell to stop foreclosure at all, they need to sell for a high enough price to pay off the mortgage corporation. And nobody is buying at those costs anymore.
They will need a short sale to be licensed by the bank as a way to sell for a reasonable cost. But the banks are notoriously difficult to work with negotiating for short sales. If they ever acknowledge receiving the give at all, it truly is too often turned down.
Then, several months later, the bank forecloses and lists the property on the market for even less than the original short sale supply. The homeowners had been not allowed to sell for a greater price to avoid foreclosure than the banks occasionally list the properties for soon after they take them back!
At the moment, the banks are shooting themselves, homeowners, and home buyers in the foot in not accepting that real estate values have fallen. But the banks also have quite small incentive to acknowledge falling residence prices.
First of all, if residence values had been accepted to be lower than they had been in 2006, this would instantly discount the value of the mortgage securities. Quite a few banks that invested heavily in CDOs, MBSs, ABSs, and the rest would have to face that they're already insolvent.
Second, banks are doing just fine in receiving funds from the government to continue operations without having to acknowledge any of the errors of the past. Congressional tongue-lashings have been the worst most banks have had to handle, and their reward for such public spectacles is typically billions, if not tens or hundreds of billions, of dollars.
Third, the government has stepped in to create it less difficult for banks to hide their losses on mortgage securities by pressuring the accounting planet to relax mark-to-market rules. This makes it easier for the banks to keep inflated values of these assets on the books whilst their borrowers have to deal with actual falling household costs within the real world.
So a bank is able to keep a mortgage on its books valued higher than any rational buyer would ever pay for a specific property. The homeowners are facing foreclosure and would just like to sell for the marketplace value and put the whole experience behind them.
But the banks plus the government have facilitated a organization environment exactly where it's a much better deal for the banks to steer clear of recognizing falling house values and merely decline short sales. Homeowners are forced to make an effort to sell for what they know to be unreasonable prices.
Thus, the government allows housing costs to be propped up and gives banks incentives not to function with borrowers to sell properties. As a result, foreclosures increase, the banks declare the issue to be poor borrowers and "liquidity," and come hat in hand to the government. The government hands them more money and gives them more advantages to prop up housing prices.
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