REFinBlog

Editor: David Reiss
Cornell Law School

September 4, 2018

Housing Finance Transitions

By David Reiss

The Congressional Budget Office released a report, Transitioning to Alternative Structures for Housing Finance: An Update. The report updates a 2014 analysis to inform policymakers about how different approaches to restructuring the housing finance system would affect federal costs, risks … Continue reading

January 25, 2018

Credit Risk Transfer and Financial Crises

By David Reiss

Susan Wachter posted Credit Risk Transfer, Informed Markets, and Securitization to SSRN. It opens, Across countries and over time, credit expansions have led to episodes of real estate booms and busts. Ten years ago, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the … Continue reading

November 9, 2017

Your Lender, The Federal Reserve Board

By David Reiss

Laurie Goodman and Bing Bai at the Urban Institute have posted Normalizing the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet The Impact on the Mortgage-Backed Securities Market. It is quite extraordinary to realize that the Federal Reserve owns nearly a third of outstanding residential … Continue reading

October 26, 2017

Mortgage Servicing Since The Financial Crisis

By David Reiss

Standard & Poors issued a report, A Decade After The Financial Crisis, What’s The New Normal For Residential Mortgage Servicing? It provides a good overview of how this hidden infrastructure of the mortgage market is functioning after it emerged from … Continue reading

May 3, 2017

Hope for the Securitization Market

By David Reiss

The Structured Finance Industry Group has issued a white paper, Regulatory Reform: Securitization Industry Proposals to Support Growth in the Real Economy. While the paper is a useful summary of the industry’s needs, it would benefit from looking at the … Continue reading

November 18, 2016

Low Down Payment Mortgages, Going Forward

By David Reiss

TheStreet.com quoted me in Home Loan Down Payments Are in Decline: Will Uncle Sam Ride to the Rescue? It opens, President-elect Donald Trump has enough problems on his hands as his administration takes shape, with the economy, health care, geopolitical strife and … Continue reading

November 4, 2016

The Jumbo/Conforming Spread

By David Reiss

Standard & Poor’s issued a research report, What Drives the Variation Between Conforming and Jumbo Mortgage Rates? It opens, What drives the variation between the conforming and jumbo mortgage rates for the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) product offered in the … Continue reading