The New York Times ran an interesting piece today on the subprime mortgage rollercoaster.  Over the past five or six years the number of subprime loans have skyrocketed as a percentage of loans issued, especially in minority communities.  This has put home ownership in reach of countless families who otherwise wouldn’t have qualified for a mortgage, but now as rates creep up and property values flatten more and more families are starting to see the downside.

The industry is now looking at its practices and standards.  I can only hope, however, that the pendulum doesn’t swing too far in the opposite direction.  As the article points out, making the rules for qualifying for a mortgage overly restrictive will have the unintended effect of making a bad situation worse for squeezed homeowners looking to refinance out of their high-rate ARMs.