REFinBlog

Editor: David Reiss
Brooklyn Law School

April 24, 2018

An Inquest into the Subprime Crisis

By David Reiss

Juan Ospina and Harald Uhlig have posted Mortgage-Backed Securities and the Financial Crisis of 2008: A Post-Mortem to SSRN. Given that the market for private-label MBS pretty much died by 2008, the title is apt. The paper presents a challenge … Continue reading

March 10, 2017

Minority Homeownership During the Great Recession

By David Reiss

Carlos Garriga et al. have posted The Homeownership Experience of Minorities During the Great Recession to SSRN. The paper concludes, The Great Recession wiped out much of the homeownership gains attained during the housing boom. However, the homeownership experience was very different … Continue reading

February 18, 2016

Economic Factors That Affect Housing Prices

By David Reiss

S&P has posted a paper on Economic Factors That Affect Housing Prices. This is, of course, an important topic, albeit one that is an art as well as a science. While S&P undertook this analysis more for mortgage-backed securities investors than for … Continue reading

October 29, 2015

Frannie v. Private-Label Smackdown

By David Reiss

S&P posted a report, Historical Data Show That Agency Mortgage Loans Are Likely to Perform Significantly Better Than Comparable Non-Agency Loans. The overview notes, We examined the default frequencies of both agency and non-­agency mortgage loans originated from 1999­-2008. As … Continue reading

October 9, 2015

Loose Credit. Plummeting Prices.

By David Reiss

Christopher Palmer has posted Why Did So Many Subprime Borrowers Default During the Crisis: Loose Credit or Plummeting Prices? to SSRN. While this is a technical paper, it is clear from the title that it addresses an important question. If it … Continue reading

September 24, 2015

Mortgage Market, Hiding in Plain Sight

By David Reiss

I blogged about the Center for Responsible Lending’s take on the 2014 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data yesterday.  The mere act of aggregating this data reveals so much about the state of the mortgage market. Today I am digging into … Continue reading

April 3, 2015

Seismic Shift in Lending?

By David Reiss

Researchers at the American Enterprise Institute’s International Center on Housing Risk have posted a study that shows a “seismic shift in lending away from large banks to nonbanks.” (1) The key takeaways are The dramatic decline in agency market share … Continue reading