Dr. Wachter's U.S. Mortgage Payment Index

The mortgage landscape for many homeowners...and new homebuyers...looks very different in 2007 than it did in 2006. To help clear the confusion around today's mortgage products and payment options, Dr. Susan M. Wachter, Professor of Real Estate and Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, launched a new quarterly report in partnership with Genworth. The first nationally published issue examines key mortgage trends and offers insights on appropriate mortgages for differing homebuyer situations.

The New "Index"
Those of us who follow the U.S. real estate market have watched with concern over the past two years as foreclosures jumped, prices leveled or dropped, and debt-to-equity ratios continued to rise. To provide a better understanding of how this changing environment affects the residential real estate market, I have developed, with the support of Genworth Financial, this Mortgage Payment Index to track how payments and mortgage arrangements are changing along with the market. Published quarterly, this Index will not promote any one brand or product. It will, however, indicate when certain products offer borrowers better value than others. This first issue compares monthly payments for popular types of low down payment mortgages. Next quarter, I will compare payments for more specific widely used mortgage products. My goal for this Index is to fill an information gap and offer a helpful tool for market watchers, so we can correct some troubling trends that have emerged.

View the entire Q1 Mortgage Payment Index. (pdf | 225kb)