Mortgage Bankers Association finding it harder to pay its own mortgage
The
Washington Post notes that last year, the “Mortgage Bankers Association
was thrilled to sign a contract to buy a fancy new headquarters
building in downtown Washington.” Since then, however, the group “has
fallen on tough times as many of the subprime mortgages dispensed by
some of its members proved dicey.” The result is that the group is now
finding it “harder than it imagined to
pay its own mortgage“:
Scheduled to close on the building in the coming weeks, the association will have to pay millions of dollars more than it would have a year ago when it contracted to buy the 160,000-square-foot structure — millions of dollars it is now less able to afford. […]
Critics also see irony — and some justice — in this predicament. “They are certainly getting what they deserve,”
said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, a liberal research group. “Mortgage bankers encouraged people
to take out mortgages that were very risky, and the result of that was
a large number of the mortgages went bad and caused mortgage interest
rates to soar. Now they are the victims of high mortgage rates and
chaos in the market more generally.”