51.   Balloon loans are often the choice of buyers who expect to relocate in a few years.

52.   Bank loans are more cumbersome to trade because most loan agreements require approvals by the bank that arranged the loan and the borrower before the loan can be sold.

53.   Bad loans are fewer and falling.

54.   Bad loans are loans on which no interest payments have been made for more than six months, or those extended to companies that have gone bankrupt.

55.   Bad loans are only one problem facing the Japanese banking industry.

56.   Because of that risk, lenders and investors in mortgage securities require higher interest rates than if the mortgage loans were not prepayable.

57.   Bank loans are hard to come by, she said, because lenders demand collateral and she has none.

58.   Because the Bank of New York loan is government-insured, it carries rigorous underwriting standards and is document-intensive.

59.   Banking analysts say these loans are nonperforming, but Japanese banks disagree, saying they expect to collect some of the money.