Refinancing your home is, apparently, very hard. So hard, in fact, that even former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke can’t do it.
According to a Bloomberg report, at a conference in Chicago Bernanke told Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics Inc. that he’d “recently tried to refinance my mortgage and I was unsuccessful in doing so.”
Cue laughter from the audience, followed by the man once responsible for U.S. monetary policy defending his own mortgage troubles.
“I’m not making that up,” he reportedly said.
He also commented on the broader lending landscape, saying that lenders “may have gone a little bit too far on mortgage credit conditions.”
The interview took place at The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care.
The mortgage credit market might still be tight, but there may be something else going on here, as the New York Times’ Neil Irwin explains.