Toxic waste pushers poison the credit worthy

During the recent housing boom, people with lousy credit were not the only ones financing their purchases with subprime mortgages. The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports that in 2005, 55% of borrowers with good credit ratings -- who could have signed up for prime mortgages at lower interest rates -- got subprime mortgages instead.

Specifically, the Journal analyzed $2.5 trillion in subprime loans made since 2000 and found that as the number of subprime loans mushroomed, an increasing proportion of them went to people with credit scores -- above 620 -- high enough to often qualify for conventional loans with far better terms. The study by First American LoanPerformance, a San Francisco research firm, found the proportion rose to 61% by the end of 2006, up from 41% in 2000.

Why did this happen? The mortgage brokers got higher commissions for selling subprime loans. On average, U.S. mortgage brokers got 1.88% of the loan amount for originating a subprime loan, compared with 1.48% for conforming loans. As a result, the brokers did not notify borrowers with good credit of the "yield spread premium" equal to 2% of the loan amount -- or $8,000 on a $400,000 loan -- if a borrower's interest rate was an extra 1.25 percentage points higher than the listed rates of the subprime lender, in this case the now defunct New Century Financial.

How could we keep this from happening in the future? Bright red letters on the cover of a mortgage document disclosing the broker's compensation scheme might be a good start.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.