From the New York Times:
The Bush administration reached an agreement with the mortgage industry today on a plan to freeze interest rates for up to five years for a portion of the two million homeowners who bought houses in the last few years with subprime loans.[...]
The agreement, to be formally announced on Thursday by President Bush, is expected to include numerous limitations that would exclude many — if not most — subprime borrowers, according to industry executives who have seen it. It would exclude those who are delinquent on their payments — about 22 percent of all subprime borrowers, according to First American Loan Performance, an industry research firm.[...]
Mortgage companies could also exclude borrowers whom they conclude are making enough money to afford higher monthly payments. Barclays Capital — extrapolating from a similar program recently unveiled in California — estimates that only about 12 percent of all subprime borrowers, or 240,000 homeowners, would get relief.
I’ll reserve judgment until I actually see some numbers. In particular, I’m going to be interested in seeing some discussion about the potential downstream effects of the proposal.
Meanwhile, receiving a “legislative survey” propaganda mailing from my state representative today (in which she requests the opinion of her constituents on various tax proposals being tossed around in the halls of the Connecticut state capitol) reminds me that the Windsor Dems are going to be pushing to implement a revaluation this coming year. The result of that will probably be a 15-20% bump in our property tax.
I wonder if I could trade my grumbling about possibly footing the bill to bail out some folks who gambled and lost in return for a bit of stabilization on the property tax front….