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Just The Same, Maybe They Should Keep A Close Eye On These
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No, it's not pre-2008. But only two credit unions are offering them, so it's not a full-scale throwback to the bad old days now that those credit unions are granting non-backed zero percent down mortgages. Sounds risky, but the credit unions say that even at the depth of the recession, those loans, which they keep in their own portfolios and don't sell off, performed well and the people who take them tend to pay (at a higher interest rate, incidentally). And this goes to something that the reaction to the excesses of the banking industry tended to ignore: A decent percentage of the stated income or nothing-down loans DID perform well in the go-go pre-crash years. The biggest problem was with the adjustables, the ones that were supposed to be refinanced before the balloon hit -- when the crash happened, the ARMs couldn't be refinanced, and the homeowners couldn't afford their payments. But the reaction, cutting off ALL non-traditional loans and only doing 30-year-fixed-heavily-documented-perfect-credit loans, might have been a little much. (U-T San Diego)
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