REFinBlog

March 28, 2016

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

• The S. Supreme Court comes out 4-4 on discrimination claims in spousal guarantor suit following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, affirming the lower court decision.
• The NJ Tax Court held that when valuing a piece of land, environmental contamination caused by a chemical manufacturing facility should be considered.
• American Capital Ltd., a private equity firm, attempts to nix suit by Mission Peak Capital affiliate alleging that it reneged on a $52 million sale of commercial mortgage-backed securities.
• The Securities & Exchange Commission filed suit against two brothers and their real estate investment firm for allegedly taking $2.7 million from investors in a Ponzi scheme.

March 25, 2016

Friday’s Government Reports Roundup

• The S. Commerce Department reported a 5.2 percent increase in housing starts in February 2016, a 7.2 percent increase from January in single-family homes.

March 24, 2016

Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Roundup

• The Hispanic Wealth Project released “The State of Hispanic Homeownership Report,” which found that Hispanic homeownership is at its highest since 2009.
• The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released a case study examining the private for-profit sector’s importance in affordable housing development, focusing on the country’s leading for-profit affordable housing developers.

March 23, 2016

Wednesday’s Academic Roundup

• Speculative Fever: Investor Contagion in the Housing Bubble, Patrick J. Bayer, Kyle Mangum & James W. Roberts, Economic Research Institutes at Duke (ERID) Working Paper No. 211.
• Network Affiliation and Mortgage Modification in the Non-Agency MBS Market, James Neil Conklin, Moussa Diop & Walter D’Lima.
• Special Economic Zones in the United States: From Colonial Charters, to Foreign-Trade Zones, Toward USSEZs, Tom W. Bell, Chapman University, Fowler Law Research Paper No. 16-02.
• Addicted to Government? The Impact of Housing Assistance on Program Participation of Welfare Recipients, Barbara A. Haley & Aref Dajani, Poverty & Public Policy 2015.
• Sharing and the City, Michèle Finck & Sofia Ranchordas.
• Residential Mortgages and Public Policy: What to Do with Fannie and Freddie?, David Kohn & James S. Sagner, Business and Society Review, Vol. 121, Issue 1, pp. 161-183, 2016 (Paid Access).

March 22, 2016

Tuesday’s Regulatory & Legislative Roundup

• New ordinance in Minneapolis, MN requires landlords to handout voter registration forms to new tenants in hopes that such a requirement will ensure that the local election administrators have accurate voter information.
• The Federal Reserve announced that even though inflation picked up, it is not over the Fed’s two percent objective, and thus, the current interest rate for bank lending will remain at 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent.

March 21, 2016

Light Bloggin’ This Week

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

• The Sixth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a False Claims Act suit against US Bank for allegedly trying to prevent home foreclosures by ignoring a commitment, costing the government $2.3 billion in insurance payments.
• Apartment owner loses in $14 million suit against Dish Network and DireTV because it failed to prove that the companies were responsible for the damages to the roof and walls in the apartment complex.