The wealthy have money problems, too — yeah they do.
Even refinancing a mortgage for their fancy digs or getting a new loan can be near impossible these days thanks to skittish lenders. And the higher the loan value, the more they worry.
Still, that people with high six-figure incomes, stellar credit histories and gobs of assets get mortgage requests turned down seems weird.
“It’s amazing really,” said Susan Bruno, a financial planner with Beacon Wealth Consulting in Rowayton, Conn., “but it makes sense when you think about it.”
For one thing, many rich folks have fallen behind on their loans. About 12% of U.S. mortgages of $1 million and larger were late this fall, twice the rate for loans under $250,000 and nearly triple the default rate on million dollar mortgages 12 months earlier, according to First American CoreLogic Inc., a California-based research firm.
It was so simple to get jumbo loans just a few years ago. The wealthy barely had to pay a 0.2 percentage point premium over a conforming loan, according to Keith Gumbinger of HSH Associates, a publisher of mortgage information.
Lenders made the loans more expensive because they are too large to be bought or backed by the government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Today the increased risk is worth about 0.8 percentage points, although that is down from the high of about 1.8 points in late 2008.
“The pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other. Banks are going overboard,” said Lyle Benson, a financial planner and member of the executive board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
That includes asking the affluent for down payments well in excess of the traditional 20%, according to Bruno. Some lenders want loan-to-value ratios to be closer to 60%, even 50%, which means putting 40% or 50% down. Or, on a million-dollar home, having $500,000 ready to hand over.
And all the other underwriting aspects of the loan have to be in place as well, something that can be difficult to demonstrate with some wealthy clients, whose income and assets can be complicated.
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