CNN on Alt-A "Liar Loans" - "All that nutty stuff is going to disappear"

I took out an October put on IndyMac (NDE) today. I think we all know Alt-A will unravel next in The Great Unwinding. "Liars Loans" to Casey Serins are even more dangerous than lending to poor people with a real jobs. And the pain will be SOOOO much worse with Alt-A than it was with subprime.

Subprime mortgages have been generating a lot of attention, and worry, among investors, economists and regulators, but those loans may be only part of the threat posed to the housing market by risky lending.

Some experts in the field are now concerned about the so-called Alt. A mortgage loan market, which has grown even faster than the market for subprime mortgage loans to borrowers with less than top credit.

Standard & Poor's estimates that the Alt. A market has gone from less than $20 billion in loans in the fourth quarter of 2003 to more than $100 billion in each of the last three quarters.

But just as the Alt. A market has grown even faster than subprime, some believe it could shrink even faster amid growing concerns in the marketplace. That means another pool of money that has supported home sales and housing prices being yanked just as home sales and prices are already in decline.

The loans were very popular with buyers seeking investment property rather than a home to live in.

"There's a reason they ask on the application do you intend to live in the property," said David Berson, chief economist for mortgage financing firm Fannie Mae. "People who live in a property are less likely to default than investors."

"All that nutty stuff is going to disappear," said Ohlbaum. "Everyone today is shying away from the 100 percent of value loan. But anytime there's a big change in the market like there is now, everyone will overcompensate for a while. I think this will last for 12 to 14 months before things are back to normal, and I think you'll see more foreclosures, more people in trouble in the meantime."

The biggest Alt. A lender is Pasadena, Calif-based IndyMac Bancorp. Trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance estimates it did $70.2 billion of the loans in 2006, up 48 percent from a year earlier. As the sector grew, its shares shot up nearly 50 percent in a year and hit a record high in April 2006. But with rising concern about the mortgage sector, its shares have plunged 36 percent since the start of 2007.

But it's not just the smaller lenders like IndyMac in the sector. Like subprime, some of the nation's largest finance firms are major players. Countrywide Financial, one of the nation's largest mortgage lenders, is the No. 2 Alt. A lender with $68 billion in loans, according Inside Mortgage Finance.

"If they get spooked, you'll see the same things that are happening in subprime-repurchase requests, funding sources drying up," said Cecala.