Anecdotal hypothesis: I found it very easy to be approved for a house I could hardly afford, so if there is another recession on the job market, I could see a lot of mortgages defaulting again. On the flip side, that's why Mortgage insurance is there. However, will we bail out the insurers next time, instead of the banks?
Sounds a whole lot like subprime. In a rising market, it's not a bad deal. In a flat/down market, expect a lot of these to crater.
I know absolutely nothing about the market, but I was under the impression that it is much less risky now.
What gives you that impression? (Genuinely curious)
Since the crisis, people now have a much better idea of what's in mortgage-backed CDO's than they did during the bubble. The ratings agencies are also under much more scrutiny to properly classify the risk of these vehicles. On the consumer side of things, it's much harder to get a mortgage than it was before the crisis. Adjustable rate mortgages are much less common, don't have misleading intro rates, and don't make brokers sky-high commissions. I grew up in Miami in the bubble, and I remember every other radio ad was for no-questions-asked home loans. You just don't have that kind of culture now.