- The Impact of the Home Valuation Code of Conduct on Appraisal and Mortgage Outcomes, Lei Ding & Leonard I. Nakamura, FRB of Philadelphia Working Paper No. 15-28.
- Financial Literacy and Mortgage Credit: Evidence from the Recent Mortgage Market Crisis, Xudong An, Raphael W. Bostic & Vincent W. Yao.
- Distance, Asymmetric Information, and Mortgage Securitization, Matthew J. Botsch.
- How High-Income Neighborhoods Receive More Service from Municipal Government: Evidence from City Administrative Data, James J. Feigenbaum & Andrew B. Hall.
- Setting the Stage for Ferguson: Housing Discrimination and Segregation in St. Louis, Rigel Christine Oliveri, Missouri Law Review, Forthcoming.
- Interactions between Job Search and Housing Decisions: A Structural Estimation, Rendon Silvio & Nuria Quella, FRB of Philadelphia Working Paper No. 15-27.
Tag Archives: appraisal
“Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics”
Judge Chesler issued an Opinion in The Prudential Insurance Company of America et al. v. Bank of America, National Association et al., No. 13-1586 (Apr. 17, 2014), deciding the motion to dismiss the Complaint. Claims relating to fraud, a theory of underwriting abandonment and the 1933 Securities Act survived the motion to dismiss. The Court summarized the case as follows:
In a nutshell, this case arises from a dispute over the sale of certain residential mortgage-backed securities (“RMBS”) by Defendants [various Bank of America parties , including Merrill Lynch parties] to Plaintiffs [various Prudential parties]. The Complaint alleges that Defendants obtained the underlying mortgages, created the securitizations based on them, issued “offering Materials” for their sale, and sold them to Plaintiffs.
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The Complaint alleges a variety of statistics in support of its claims. It is often not clear, however, what the basis for a particular statistic is. (1-2)
The Court’s description of the Complaint is pretty damning. But the Court does not find that the poor use of statistics in the Complaint is fatal to all of its claims.
Here are some highlights of the Court’s assessment of the Complaint:
- “this Court does not find that the Analysis, as described in the Complaint, is such obvious junk research that it fails to constitute relevant factual allegations which, considered along with the other factual allegations in the Complaint, make plausible certain of the assertions of misrepresentation.” (8)
- “The Complaint alleges that Defendants knowingly misrepresented that they would properly transfer title to the underlying mortgage loans to the particular trusts. The sole factual allegation made in support is: ‘Prudential’s forensic loan-level analysis revealed that across the Offerings Prudential tested, 43% of the Mortgage Loans were not properly assigned to the Trusts.’ Yes, if true, that is an astonishing fact– but there is not even a suggestion in the Complaint of a theory of how this gives rise to the inference of a knowing misrepresentation.” (13)
- “The Complaint has so little explanation of the AVM [automated valuation model] methodology that this Court has no idea of how the computer used what information to generate property appraisals.” (15)
Notwithstanding the Court’s critique, it ends up finding the Complaint persuasive in the main:
The claim that Defendants’ representations about the underwriting practices and standards used in the issuance of the underlying mortgage loans were fraudulent because of a systemic abandonment of such underwriting standards is perhaps the central claim in this case. in brief, this Court has carefully examined the Complaint and finds that it states an abundance of factual allegations supporting this claim. (21)
The drafters of the complaint might reckon, ‘no harm no foul’ from the Court’s conclusion. But the rest of us might better see this as their having dodged a bullet, a bullet that the Plaintiffs’ attorneys shot at themselves. Mark Twain had said that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Not sure what he would have said about those in this Complaint — damned statistics?
Reiss on Remodeling
RealtorMag quoted me in Stay Put and Remodel — or Move? about the relative advantages of renovating and moving. It reads in part:
A New Year ushers in new resolutions, which often includes changes on the home front, but deciding what to do with it can be tough for home owners, financially and emotionally.
As the real estate market rebounds and buyers increase in number, help your contacts make a well-informed decision on the direction they should take with their home. Your insight is valuable when customers are torn between selling in order to upgrade and remodeling their current space to add value and meet their needs. Even those who don’t list and sell with you now may do so later, and even refer friends and family because of your attentive service.
Here are seven key steps to help clients arrive at the best solution:
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6. Compare the appraisal and remodeling costs with other neighborhood homes for future resale.
Even though home owners should base decisions in large measure on enjoyment and not wholly on resale value, it’s smart to have an idea of how changes will affect the house compared with others nearby, says real estate attorney and Brooklyn Law School Professor David Reiss.
It’s never smart to overbuild for an area. The type of improvement can also affect the value. Remodeling changes may add to the house’s worth without changing real estate taxes, while an addition will probably cause an uptick in taxes.
More on Misrepresentation
NY Supreme Court Justice Schweitzer (NY County) issued a Decision and Order on a motion to dismiss in HSH Nordbank AG, et al., v. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., et al., No. 652991/12 (Nov. 26, 2013) that builds on the NY jurisprudence of RMBS misrepresentation. The decision notes that “The gravamen of the complaint is that Goldman Sachs knew that” its metrics and representations regarding various RMBS “were false, but did not alert Nordbank.” (2) In particular,
Nordbank alleges that Goldman Sachs knew that loan originators had systematically abandoned underwriting guidelines described in the Offering Materials. It alleges that Goldman Sachs knowingly reported false credit ratings, owner-occupancy percentages, appraisal amounts, and loan-to-value ratios. It alleges that although Goldman Sachs represented otherwise in the Offering Materials, Goldman Sachs never intended to properly effectuate transfer of the underlying notes and mortgages that collateralized the Certificates. (2)
The Court found that Nordbank “sufficiently alleged that Goldman Sachs had knowledge that originators were deliberately inflating appraisal values to artificially obtain understated CLTV ratios that corresponded with lower risk.” (9) As a result, “the complaint sufficiently describes actionable misrepresentations regarding appraisal values, loan-to-value ratios, and owner-occupancy rates.” (9)
Nordbank also alleged
that it has suffered losses totaling more than $1.5 billion as a result of the alleged misrepresentations regarding the loans’ conformity with originators’ underwriting guidelines. Specifically, Nordbank alleges that it has been unable to transfer notes and mortgages that have declined in value because of the poor quality of the underlying loans. The representations at issue allegedly resulted in higher rates of default, an impaired ability to obtain forecloses, and ultimately, a lower cash flow to Certificate-holders like Nordbank. Because Nordbank has sufficiently alleged a chain of causation leading from the alleged abandonment of underwriting standards to a decline in the market value of the Certificates, the complaint cannot be dismissed for failure to allege lost causation. (20)
As this decision was on a motion to dismiss, none of these findings result in actual liability for Goldman Sachs, but they do provide a road map for what liability could look like. As I have noted in the past, it will be interesting to see how this body of law will affect the securitization process going forward.
