By James Bovard
In his State of the Union address, Biden proclaimed, “My administration is also eliminating title insurance on federally backed mortgages.” What could possibly go wrong?
Subsidized mortgages helped send home prices skyrocketing in recent years, along with the Federal Reserve artificially suppressing interest rates.
Since Biden took office, the average monthly mortgage payment for new home has almost doubled, reaching $3,322 per month.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/15/opinion/biden-is-taking-a-wrecking-ball-to-americas-housing-market
Would you be willing to save a few hundred dollars on a car purchase if the seller seemed squirrely and didn’t have the title to the car?
Unfortunately, you will be on the hook for Joe Biden’s latest vote buying scheme to subsidize mortgages for houses with shaky titles.
In his State of the Union address, Biden proclaimed, “My administration is also eliminating title insurance on federally backed mortgages.” What could possibly go wrong?
Title insurance protects homeowners against financial loss if there is a defect in the title to their property.
“Wrecking ball benevolence” — my phrase in a 2004 Barron’s article that was quoted in a 2017 federal appeals court decision — leveled the housing sector.
As Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, declared in 2013, “Rank cronyism, Enron-style accounting and outright financial fraud made [Fannie and Freddie] so powerful and unaccountable that they were able to wreck our economy.”
Despite the debacles earlier in this century, Team Biden is championing “no clean title, no problem” mortgage loans.
Biden policymakers believe they are so smart that they can turbo-charge housing demand while removing the guardrails — and nothing bad will happen (except Biden’s reelection).
In lieu of title insurance, the Biden administration will approve granting subsidized mortgages based on “attorney opinion letters” that assert a lawyer believes someone owns a house.
Such form letters can now be purchased for $199 in some locales. This sounds on par with the $99 online deals selling “emotional support animal letters” people exploit to “prove” they need their dog, cat, kangaroo or squirrel with them at all times.
Having a page of pablum on fancy law-firm letterhead will be no competition for a clean deed — or a tangled land dispute that could go back generations.
A recent report by FundingShield found that home title fraud risk “reached an all-time high” late last year.
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