John Hansen: “Let me just say to the people of America, what is private mortgage insurance? It is a very necessary tool that the…”

“Let me just say to the people of America, what is private mortgage insurance? It is a very necessary tool that the mortgage industry uses. Without that, when that young couple finally gets the opportunity to buy their first house, they are looking forward to it, they can hardly wait to get their keys, they walk in and they sign papers about that deep. There is probably not one person in America, well, maybe one or two, that really understands what he is even signing, but he gets down to the time and he signs something on private mortgage insurance, and what is it that he just bought? He bought something that does not protect him. It is not a homeowner's, it is not a title insurance. What it does is it protects the person who is lending him the money. Why does he have private mortgage insurance? Because he could not come up with 20 percent down payment. So literally thousands of these are across America. Are they necessary? Yes. Are they good? Yes. Should we have them? Absolutely. But what happens when he gets it down to the 20 percent? We are finding that very, very few lenders take it off.”