房利美前任首席执行官：新经济危机对房价影响不大

当美国的房产泡沫在2007年破灭时，随之而来的信贷危机在全球掀起了长达数年的经济衰退潮。如今，有鉴于紧张的国际贸易局势以及全球增长的放缓，“经济萧条可能即将来临”成为了热议的话题。人们想知道，经济下行对房地产市场会造成什么样的影响。

房利美的前首席执行官蒂姆·梅耶珀罗斯对此持乐观态度，该抵押贷款巨头为三分之一的美国住宅提供资助。他在最新一期《平衡分类账户》专栏（Balancing The Ledger）中对《财富》杂志的罗伯特·哈克特和简·韦兹内透露：“相对于10年前，我对当前房地产市场的现状和价格并没有那么担心。”《平衡分类账户》是财富的一档栏目，报道金融与科技的交叉领域。

梅耶珀罗斯说：“从房地产市场的角度来看，我认为当下一场经济危机到来时，我们将能够很好地经受住考验。”他在今年年初受聘担任旧金山金融科技初创企业Blend的总裁，该公司致力于制作银行软件。（梅耶珀罗斯于2018年10月离开房利美，此前曾经担任该公司首席执行官6年，总法律顾问3年。）

梅耶珀罗斯说，自大萧条以来，贷款的质量已经有所改善，而且借贷决策也有更多更好的数据可供参考，因此系统风险得以降低，但10年前并不是这样。

梅耶珀罗斯说：“我在信贷危机期间加入了房利美，我可以确认的是，公司资产负债表上有1800万美元的房贷，但我们很难理解它们实际上都是什么贷款，因为其中的每一笔贷款都有数百页的书面报告，但我们实际所掌握的数据与我们想要的数据相距甚远。”

梅耶珀罗斯说，自己当前的雇主Blend致力于帮助富国这类银行实现抵押贷款申请流程的数字化，也正在维修此前受损的系统。公司正在让金融公司“真正依赖数据而不是文件。”

Blend的首席执行官及联合创始人尼玛·格哈姆萨里与梅耶珀罗斯一道参加了《平衡分类账户》栏目。他说，房地产市场和他的业务正处于上升期。Blend的私下估值略低于10亿美元。

格哈姆萨里说，抵押贷款“利率如今真的很合适”。他还指出，“我们看到，公司平台在再融资领域出现了不小的增长。”他认为主要原因在于美联储于7月削减了利率。

格哈姆萨里说：“我是在过去两年于Blend工作期间申请了自己的第一笔抵押贷款。我觉得自己应该有能力在今后很长一段时间内来逐渐偿还这笔贷款。”

格哈姆萨里预计，基于分布式数据库的热门科技区块链将让消费者在未来获得更大的财务数据掌控权。他说：“这个领域可能在未来18至24个月内会发生异常迅速的变化，而且它有可能在未来五年之内变为主流。”

与此同时，购房者的年龄段也会发生变化。梅耶珀罗斯称：“有色人群将在今后几十年中成为新购房者的主力军。”

与主流观点相反的是，千禧一代也将考虑为自己找一个家。梅耶珀罗斯说：“千禧一代感兴趣的房子并不一定是时髦的城市公寓。他们实际上希望居住在他们自小长大的那种郊区房屋。”（财富中文网）

译者：冯丰

审校：夏林

When the U.S. housing bubble burst in 2007, the resulting credit crunch helped kick off a global, years-long economic downturn. Now, as international trade tensions and slowing global growth spur talk of a possible, impending recession, people are wondering, how might such a slump affect the real estate market?

Tim Mayopoulos, the former chief executive of Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant that finances roughly a third of American homes, is sanguine about the situation. “I’m much less worried about the state of housing and home prices than I was 10 years ago,” he told Fortune’s Robert Hackett and Jen Wieczner on the latest episode of Balancing The Ledger, Fortune’s show covering the intersection of finance and technology.

“I think when the next recession comes, we'll be able to weather that actually pretty well, from a housing market perspective,” said Mayopoulos, who at the start of the year became president of Blend, a San Francisco-based financial tech startup that makes software for banks. (Mayopoulos left Fannie Mae in October 2018 after a six-year tenure at the helm, plus three additional years as general counsel.)

Since the Great Recession, loans have improved in quality and lending decisions have been based on more and better data, reducing systemic risk, Mayopoulos said. That wasn’t the case a decade ago.

“I was joining Fannie Mae right as the crisis was hitting, and I can confirm that, you know, with 18 million mortgage loans on our balance sheet, it was very hard for us to understand actually what was in those loans, because for every one of those 18 million loans we had hundreds of pages of paper, but we didn't really have nearly as much data as we wanted to have,” Mayopoulos said.

Mayopoulos’s current employer, Blend, which digitizes mortgage application processes for banks such as Wells Fargo, is repairing a system that was formerly broken, he said. The company is getting financial firms “to really rely on data instead of documents.”

Nima Ghamsari, CEO and cofounder of Blend, which is privately valued just under $1 billion, also joined Mayopoulos on Balancing The Ledger. He said that the housing market—and his business—is booming.

Mortgage “rates are really good right now,” Ghamsari said. “We're seeing a big uptick in refinances on our platform,” he noted, citing the Federal Reserve’s July decision to cut interest rates as a major contributing factor.

“I, personally, got my first mortgage while I was at Blend in the last two years, and it was something that I think, hopefully, I'll be able to hold onto for a long time,” Ghamsari said.

Blockchains, a buzzy technology based on distributed databases, will give consumers more control over their financial data in the years to come, Ghamsari predicted. “That's probably a space that's going to evolve pretty quickly over the next maybe 18-24 months, and hopefully it'll become mainstream in the next five years,” he said.

Meanwhile, the demographics of homebuyers will shift too. “Communities of color will actually be the largest proportion of new home buyers in coming decades,” Mayopoulos said.

Contrary to popular belief, millennials will also be looking to plant roots. “The kinds of homes [millennials] are interested in are not necessarily the hip urban apartment,” Mayopoulos said. “They actually want to live in suburban homes like the ones that they grew up in.”