FHA's Risky Business

Forbes reports:

In the wake of the subprime mortgage debacle, who on Earth would loan to "first-time home buyers whose high rents left them strapped for cash" or borrowers "with strong current incomes but not a lot of savings"? Wells Fargo says it will--with a little help from the federal government.

Touted as a savior in the housing crisis by Congress and the White House, the Federal Housing Administration is being turned into a bank's best friend. Major U.S. lenders are again aggressively enticing risky borrowers, offering FHA-backed mortgages with attractive terms and as little as 3% down. Meanwhile, the agency watches as its liabilities balloon.

As a result, the nation's mortgage market is quietly undergoing a radical and potentially risky transformation that shifts liability for hundreds of billions of dollars on to the government's books.

"FHA delinquencies tend to be quite high," says Alex Pollock, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. "They are substantially higher than the prime market--not as high as the subprime market, but nonetheless quite high. You're in a sector of the market that is by definition risky."

It's time to separate housing from state.