Risk = Opportunity

A credit crunch has additionally been described as a capital crunch. There is usually a shortage in equity capital, and this limits lenders’ abilities to make loans, and this is especially true in regions that have been most affected by the subprime mortgage and financial crisis. In a credit crunch, the lenders quit lending, and instead they hoard their capital, as they are afraid of loaning out too much money with the increasing bankruptcies, job losses, and mortgage defaults, as well as additional factors which boost the risks of an individual not being capable of repaying a loan.

Fewer dollars available for mortgages is the impact that this has on the real estate market. There becomes an oversupply of houses on the market, as fewer dollars are available in mortgages. And this in turn means that construction of new homes will be slowed or even stopped altogether because builders cannot sell the homes they have built. This was evident in areas of the nation where bankruptcies and foreclosures exacerbated an already saturated real estate market.

Foreclosures, bankruptcies, and job losses caused individuals to receive poor scores from their credit reports, and this caused even lower credit scores. Low credit scores increase the difficulty of securing credit at all, much less getting good terms on a loan. Further, given the increasing bankruptcies, defaults and foreclosures, banks clamped down on their lending criteria until their standards became excessively restrictive.

Persons who ought to have been able to receive approval for mortgage loans were rejected. As fewer people were able to buy houses, there were even more surplus houses on the market that couldn’t be sold. The excessive number of houses for sale must be resolved for the market to rejuvenate, but several factors, not the least of which is inordinately restrictive mortgage lending policy, are creating a drag on the recovery.

Yet another negative impact on the real estate market has proven to be the corrections in price, as some regions have seen home prices plummet in the amount of 25% or even higher. Because of the drastic drop in home value, some people owed more on their existing mortgage than they could get if the house was sold; this led to some homeowners deciding to go through foreclosure rather than continuing to pay on their mortgage.

Any purchaser having difficulty getting financing is best advised to remain calm and not panic. They ought to keep doing all of the things possible to improve their credit, mend their credit reports, and to boost their overall credit scores. When things loosen up, they will discover that it is simpler to be approved for a mortgage loan, and finally they will be able to buy the house that they desire.

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