"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones." Machiavelli
Albany and the Subprime MarketBy DIA, Section News
Not sure this is of interest to most readers but it should be. Pretty much everyone agrees that having more homeowners in Albany is a good thing. In the past few years many people got into homes with loans they were quite simply not qualified to get if any sort of common sense financial analysis was used. The bulk of these are known as subprime and are currently wreaking havoc on the housing industry. The NY Times has a fascinating map of the whole state that breaks out the percentage of mortgages that are subprime. You can scroll on the map and zoom in on Albany. It breaks down the city by neighborhoods and there is some scary info in there. There are two neighborhoods where 75% of the mortgages are subprime. Most are around 50%. The chart also includes median income numbers which are not very encouraging. We may be looking at a wave of foreclosures in the next two years. Not exactly the thing we need to deal with our housing issues. A review of Schenectady and Troy shows that they also have issues but it appears Albany has a pretty strong lead in the percentage of subprime loans.
The other chart to consider is this one. Most subprime mortgages have low intro teaser rates. After a few years those reset to higher rates, often much higher. As you can see in the chart the majority reset in the second half of 07 and then 2008. It will take a while for this to impact all the loans. Many markets are experiencing record foreclosures already. I predict we will see a big upswing here in Albany in 08 and 09. I'm glad we had all those bankers on the Recapitalize Albany team. They obviously were the right people to give us advice on how to fix our blighted neighborhoods.
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