The "Reset Problem" in the Housing Market

Barron's reports:

THE RED-HOT U.S. HOUSING MARKET MAY be fast approaching its date with destiny. Indeed, inside the mortgage trade, much anxiety is being focused on a looming "reset problem." Over the next two years, monthly payments on an estimated $600 billion of mortgages to borrowers with checkered or no credit histories -- the "sub-prime" market -- may zoom as much as 50% higher, as the two-year teaser rates on hybrid adjustable-rate loans expire and interest payments hit their fully indexed levels.

In the past, such resets caused little disruption. For one thing, the sub-prime market was strikingly smaller. Only $97 billion of such mortgages were originated in 1996, compared with a mammoth $628 billion last year and $540 billion in 2004, according to the trade publication Inside B&C Lending. Sub-prime loans outstanding now account for more than 10% of the total U.S. mortgage debt of $8.4 trillion.

You'll want to read the whole thing.It's free this week from Barron's.Higher rates will probably force more houses on the market.Some of these people that bought are the most marginal buyers who will have to sell.If all this wasn't enough,the baby boomers start retiring January 1,2008.