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Journal Article
Paying Paul and robbing no one: an eminent domain solution for underwater mortgage debt
In the view of many analysts, the best way to assist ?underwater? homeowners?those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth?is to reduce the principal on their home loans. Yet in the case of privately securitized mortgages, such write-downs are almost impossible to carry out, since loan modifications on the scale necessitated by the housing market crash would require collective action by a multitude of geographically dispersed security holders. The solution, this study suggests, is for state and municipal governments to use their eminent domain powers to buy up and ...
Report
Republican Home-Owning
Ten years after failing and being rescued by our federal government, our nation’s principal secondary market makers in home mortgage loans – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – remain in federal receivership. The proximate reason for this is that neither Republicans nor Democrats in Congress have been able to find consensus – interparty or intraparty consensus – on what should be done with our home mortgage GSEs post-crisis. The deeper reason is that public – that is to say, citizen – ownership of secondary market makers in home loans is in a certain sense ‘natural’ in any ...