Foreign Nationals: Today’s Sign That Liquidity May Be Returning To The Market

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I am working with a Dublin-based real estate developer, providing Irish real estate investors with mortgages for United States-based properties. 

A project on which we are currently working has been interesting in context of how the mortgage market is changing.

When we started work on this Chicago-based condo building, the lending landscape was very different than it is today. 

Our initial lender evaluation for the buyers/investors included eight separate banks and a multitude of mortgage products. 

As of today, we are down to one. 

It reminds me how thankful I should be that I represent buyers instead of a Hedge Fund, or other investment company.

Because I am a broker and not a bank representative, the mortgage market can crumble around us but I can still service Foreign National buyers without even a blip of  disruption -- when one bank closes it doors, I still have a stable of banks from which to choose.

And that's precisely what's happening. 

Most of the lenders in our initial evaluation have disqualified themselves for a number of reasons:

• Some <ahem> "closed their doors"
• More than a few tightened their mortgage guidelines and now the approval process is an onerous one
• Most raised interest rates so high that the math of investing in real estate in America no longer works

There is still (at least) one bank that fits the bill and I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I saw that its interest rates had dropped by 0.250% for the borrower profile and product that the Irish buyers will be using.

That's an overnight movement and signals to me that risk premiums may be dramatically reducing for certain sectors of the mortgage lending market.  If Foreign National lending risk is reducing, other areas may not be far behind and that could help provide some support to the Alt-A and portfolio lending markets -- all good things for housing as a whole.

I know it's a fairly narrow market but there's a core group of international readers around here for whom the Foreign National lending niche is important.  If it's important to you, it's important to me.  I'll be sure to keep an eye on things for you all.