Monday, October 15, 2007

Will the new employer sanction law increase Arizona's mortgage default rate?

I thought the Wall Street Journal article, also picked up in the Tucson Citizen, saying that immigrants not in the country legally have lower default rates on mortgages was very interesting. The presumption is that people who use an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) to pay taxes rather than a Social Security Number are probably in the country at least without work authorization. For loans more than 90 days in arrears, ITIN mortgages have a delinquency rate of about 0.5 percent, according to the Journal article. That compares with 1 percent for prime mortgages and 9.3 percent for subprime mortgages extended to those with spotty credit histories. "Our default level is almost zero," one lender quoted in the article stated. "It's an absolutely promising market. These Hispanic families will pay their mortgage before anything else." The article did point out that those getting a mortgage through an ITIN are put through greater scrutiny, but it still indicates that there is a market of homeowners in our country illegally who are pumping money into our economy.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think that we are all victim of our own lack of knowledge in regards to ITIN lending. It is very easy to start pointing our fingers to the immigrants and blaming them for all our domestic and international problems. The fact that their limited portfolio has a almost perfect record make many financial institutions wanting to tap this niche, but the potential political retaliations is to greater for these lenders openly exposing to this market. But the fact of the matter is that if the bigger lender are not capable or willing to lend to the $ 44 million dollars that represent this market according to NAHREP, some one else will.

Bill Arce

CompraTuCasaConITIN.com

Unknown said...

I think that we are all victim of our own lack of knowledge in regards to ITIN lending. It is very easy to start pointing our fingers to the immigrants and blaming them for all our domestic and international problems. The fact that their limited portfolio has a almost perfect record make many financial institutions wanting to tap this niche, but the potential political retaliations is to greater for these lenders openly exposing to this market. But the fact of the matter is that if the bigger lender are not capable or willing to lend to the $ 44 million dollars that represent this market according to NAHREP, some one else will.

Bill Arce
CompraTuCasaConITIN.com