Talk:Mortgage Insurance

• Mortgage insurance has been controversial because some critics claim that it made the encouraged excessive subprime mortgage lending.

This possibly is a misleading claim and a lame excuse to detract from real causes and underlying problems. While mortgage insurance may have had an impact in declining values, etc., it generally was limited to prime mortgage borrowers with 80%+ financing. Subprime lending generally is between 55% and 70% financing - that's why the borrowers are subprime. If Fannie Mae guidelines were raised to include financing for subprime borrowers at 80% and greater, it was very late in the game (say, post 2005 and beyond) and there could not have been enough loans written by itself to cause a collapse.

To the extent mortgage insurance impacted Fannie Mae's insolvency, it was among prime borrowers generally with 2/28 Adjustable Rate Mortgages who defaulted, not subprime borrowers below 80% with no mortgage insurance required. OscarO 14:05, 22 March 2013 (EDT)