News Topic: Mortgage Debt & Home Equity

There's a fascinating and absolutely cut-throat fight going on between BofA and MBIA. There's been some good media coverage of how a litigation fight over MBS fraud has spilled over into a really nasty corporate finance battle. I think it shows ... Read full article

Much chatter has been made of Ocwen's acquisition of ResCap at the bankruptcy auction (although not as much as the acquirer of its loan portfolio) , but I'm much more intrigued by its pickup of Wilbur Ross's ... Read full article

How is one to reconcile the civil fraud allegations in the US's suit against Countrywide for defrauding the GSEs with the Department of Justice dropping its criminal investigation of Angelo Mozillo in 2011? ... Read full article

In October 2011, I testified to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee's Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection. In a nation of short memories, the hearing took place amid claims that we did not need new consumer financial ... Read full article

Today, October 2, is the last day for the nation's five largest mortgage companies to implement the servicing reforms in the National Mortgage Settlement. As California Monitor, I issued my first report to highlight one of the most important ... Read full article

A few very quick impressions about the NYAG's suit against JPMorgan.   ... Read full article

While industry and government news releases emphasize the declining rates of delinquency and foreclosure, the declines remain agonizingly slow.  Yes, serious defaults on mortgages are down from their peak in 2010.  On the other hand, there have been 4.5 ... Read full article

There's no question that we at the Slips take a particular interest in the Massachusetts Senate race. But usually we don't have much to say about it. Still, something Scott Brown said today struck me as rather significant--much more so than a ... Read full article

My comments on the FHFA mortgage fee increase for NY, NJ, FL, IL and CT, here at Consumer Law & Policy. ... Read full article

The annual Federal Reserve report on Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data for 2011 paints a bleak picture.  Despite interest rates at or below 4%, mortgage lending volume continued its four-year decline.  The drop in mortgage lending was particularly ... Read full article

Susan Wachter and I have a new paper out, entitled Why Housing ?   The paper is a critical review of scholarly theories of the housing bubble.  It focuses on the question of what made housing vulnerable to a bubble and why it has been so hard to ... Read full article

The NYTimes had a very good editorial today bemoaning, with resignation, that there will not be any serious prosecutions of senior bank executives or institutions for the financial crisis.  The biggest fish to be caught was Lee Farkas. Who? That's ... Read full article

Joshua Goodman at the Harvard Kennedy School and I have a new paper out examining the impact of Chapter 13 cramdown on the cost and availability of mortgage credit.  Historically, when cramdown was permitted in some judicial districts prior to 1993 it was ... Read full article

Ezra Klein has joined the melee over the Obama Administration's housing policy failure with an apologia for the Administration.  Klein argues:  The right question on housing, then, is not whether the administration’s policies proved insufficient. ... Read full article

The International Monetary Fund has focused its critical gaze on us. Just in time for the holiday marking the end of our colonial period, the IMF has completed its "Mission to the United States of America."  See here.   The IMF has held up its ... Read full article

For the past couple of years, I've been thinking that cramdown is dead as a policy solution. But I was thinking about cramdown as requiring legislation. It doesn't. We could start doing it tomorrow. Under current bankruptcy law, a Chapter 13 ... Read full article

Folks in Washington tell me there is a general sense of “foreclosure fatigue” in our nation’s capital. It’s just so boring to keep thinking about all the people losing their homes year after year. Can’t we move on to something new? This attitude goes ... Read full article

FHFA has sued the State of Illinois and some local government units claiming that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exempt from state and local real estate transfer taxes. FHFA's argument is basically that the GSEs are subject only to non-discriminatory ... Read full article