The Institutional Risk Analyst

But the greater risk to borrowers and investors is the widely held illusion that the valuations for rental properties grow to the sky. Take the example of China, where two decades of home price appreciation has been reversed and home prices have now fallen steadily for the past three years. How did this happen? Because the Chinese foolishly imitated the US methodology for tracking home prices, giving their citizens a false image of the actual conditions in the housing market

The aggressive behavior of some issuers is distorting pricing for loans in the secondary market and may be creating the circumstances for the next systemic “surprise” in the nonbank sector. To us, Exhibit A in the category of a potential nonbank default event is United Wholesale Mortgage (UWMC), aka “Countrywide II.”