"We might think, oh, well if we can’t pay, that bank or savings and loan or credit institution is going to be hurt," Dr. Walden says. "Actually that’s not the case because what happens is 70 percent of those mortgages initiated by those local lending institutions, (and) those institutions are actually going to what’s called package those mortgages together as an investment and sell them into what’s called the secondary mortgage market.

"Now in the secondary mortgage market, investors who buy those mortgages actually have some backing by federally backed agencies," Walden says. " So ultimately if there is a massive amount of homeownership and mortgage defaults, the biggest loser actually could be these federally backed agencies."