REFinBlog

Editor: David Reiss
Cornell Law School

June 26, 2014

State of the Nation’s Housing Finance

By David Reiss

The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University has released the 2014 edition of The State of the Nation’s Housing. As to the nation’s housing finance system, the report finds that The government still had an outsized footprint in … Continue reading

May 19, 2014

Foreclosure Review

By David Reiss

The US Government Accountability Office issued a report, Foreclosure Review:  Regulators Could Strengthen Oversight and Improve Transparency of the Process. GAO did this study because it was asked to examine the amended consent order process relating to foreclosures. This process … Continue reading

May 16, 2014

Wary of FHA HAWKing Mortgage Access

By David Reiss

The Federal Housing Administration issued its Access Blueprint: What FHA is Doing to Expand Access to Mortgage Credit for Underserved Borrowers. The blueprint identifies a serious problem: The economic crisis significantly constrained credit making it tough for anyone with less … Continue reading

February 13, 2014

Reiss on BK Live!

By David Reiss

The BK Live segment on Mortgage Inequities in Brooklyn has been posted to the web. Mark Winston Griffith (Brooklyn Movement Center Executive Director), Alexis Iwaniszie (New Economy Project) and I discuss mortgage inequities and how they effect Brooklyn (and beyond). … Continue reading

February 3, 2014

Foreclosure Prevention: The Real McCoy

By David Reiss

Patricia McCoy has posted Barriers to Foreclosure Prevention During the Financial Crisis (also on SSRN). In the early 2000s, Pat was one of the first legal scholars to identify predatory behaviors in the secondary mortgage market. These behaviors resulted in … Continue reading

January 6, 2014

A New History of Mortgage Banking — Part Two!

By David Reiss

I know, I know, you can’t get enough of this stuff. Yesterday, I noted a couple of highlights from Mortgage Banking in the United States 1870-1940. The last part of the report carefully documents how various players in the urban … Continue reading

January 3, 2014

A New History of Mortgage Banking

By David Reiss

Yes, I know, a dry subject for most. But for some nerds, there are lots of insights in Mortgage Banking in the United States 1870-1940. The author, Kenneth Snowden, highlights this finding, which gives more credit to the Federal Farm … Continue reading