With many of the riskier loan products that have been popular in recent years now out of the picture, large numbers of homeowners are turning back to the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, according to a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School."It’s encouraging to see that consumers have not been scared off by the ‘credit crunch’ and the ‘mortgage meltdown’ talk, and are returning to secure, tried-and-true home financing," real estate and finance professor Susan Wachter said in a statement.Adjustable-rate mortgage applications dropped 46.9 percent from September 2006 to the same month this year, according to Wachter’s latest Mortgage Payment Index. Meanwhile, applications for fixed-rate loans climbed 30.2 percent during the same period.Wachter’s report also shows that borrowers who put down less than 20 percent on a home took out single mortgages with private mortgage insurance, or PMI, rather than risking piggyback loans. The number of borrowers using PMI rose 36 percent in the second quarter of 2007 and is up 69 percent from the beginning of 2006.

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