Hello FlipBoard Readers! Guess what?!
Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest U.S. securities firm, told thousands of clients this week that they won’t be allowed to withdraw money on their home-equity credit lines, said an inside source or person familiar with the situation.
Most of the clients had properties that have lost value, according to the person, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public. The New York-based investment bank will review home-equity lines of credit, or HELOCs, monthly from now on, the person told me yesterday.
Wall Street firms including Morgan Stanley are ratcheting back on risks after the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and ensuing credit contraction saddled banks and brokerages with almost $500 billion of writedowns and losses. Consumers fell behind on home-equity credit lines at the fastest pace in two decades in the first quarter, the American Bankers Association reported last month.
“Morgan Stanley periodically reassesses client property values and risk profiles,” said Christine Pollak, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman in Purchase, New York. “A segment of clients was recently notified of a change in the status of their home- equity line of credit, or HELOC, due to a change in the value of their property and/or their credit profile.”
Pollak declined to specify the dollar amount of the frozen credit lines. The firm’s global wealth management division, which doesn’t disclose how many clients it serves, had 8,350 advisers managing $739 billion of customer assets at the end of May, according to its second-quarter earnings report.
Morgan Stanley has already taken about $14.4 billion of losses related to leveraged loans and collateralized debt obligations. The clampdown on home-equity loans mirrors similar efforts by commercial banks, said David Hendler, an analyst at Credit Sights Inc. in New York.
“All consumer lenders and home-equity lenders are reassessing the environment given the pressure on housing and the economy,” Hendler said.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second-biggest U.S. bank by market value after Bank of America Corp., has notified 150,000 customers about changes in their home-equity lines of credit since March, said Christine Holevas, a Chicago-based spokeswoman.
In some cases the lines have been reduced and in other cases they’ve been suspended, depending on the change in home values, she said. The changes affect about 15 percent of JPMorgan’s home- equity credit customers, Holevas said.
This seems like pure bull-”crap”, to me. However, this draconian activity is indicative of just how screwed up these large banks are right now. It’s funny, when you owe them, they foreclose and take your property. When they owe you, they freeze your credit lines and “re-evaluate the situation monthly”.
Folks - the bottom to this mess is coming. I hope your business is in order so you can take advantage!
