Law Commons^™

Take This House And Shove It: The Emotional Drivers Of Strategic Default, Brent T. White

Publications

No abstract provided.

Putting The Brakes On Private Transfer Fee Covenants, R. Wilson Freyermuth

Faculty Publications

This article will discuss private transfer fee covenants, using one popular model as an example. After explaining how a private transfer fee covenant operates, the article will review the background legal principles relevant to its enforceability As this article will argue, sound policy does not justify the enforcement of private transfer fee covenants. The article concludes with a discussion of recent state legislative efforts to invalidate private transfer fee covenants and highlights a new model statute that, if adopted, would declare such covenants void as contrary to public policy.

Discretionary Pricing, Mortgage Discrimination, And The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm, Jeffrey L. Taren

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

For generations, mortgage lending has always been the gateway to the American dream of homeownership, and, historically, has also been characterized by widespread discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and their communities. Mortgage discrimination in the modem era has often been accomplished through a technique known as discretionary pricing, in which lenders allow their loan officers and brokers to increase borrowers' costs from an objectively determined base rate. In the past decade alone, discretionary pricing has cost minority homeowners billions of dollars in extra payments, which, in tum, has led these minorities to suffer higher foreclosure rates than whites and …

Women And Subprime Lending: An Essay Advocating Self-Regulation Of The Mortgage Lending Industry,Symposium On Law As Transformative Agent: Thinking And Doing Law In New Categories, Carol N. Brown

Law Faculty Publications

The subsequent national mortgage foreclosure crisis that seemed almost 5 uncontrollable by 2007 ignited a mortgage-related financial crisis that affected the global market place. News media, business reports, government investigations, 6 regulatory inquiries, and citizen suits focused national attention on the housing crisis and the problems attending what soon came to be known as the “mortgage meltdown.” A dual mortgage market had emerged in which subprime lending 7 disproportionately affected minorities (particularly blacks and Hispanics), women, and the elderly.8 Evidence of the disparate impact felt by certain minority borrowers is abundant and the evidence of gender disparities in subprime lending …

Discriminatory Housing Advertisements On-Line: Lessons From Craigslist, Rigel C. Oliveri

Faculty Publications

The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to publish discriminatory housing advertisements. This has long been applied to newspapers, which have effectively screened all discriminatory housing ads from sight. However, in 1996 Congress created a loophole when it immunized website operators from liability for the content posted to their sites by third parties. Without publisher liability, websites have no incentive to screen out discriminatory housing ads. The result is that such ads are proliferating in cyberspace.While this situation is problematic from a fair housing standpoint, it presents a valuable opportunity. For the first time in a generation discriminatory housing advertisements …

The Morality Of Strategic Default, Brent T. White

Publications

No abstract provided.

Underwater And Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear, And The Social Management Of The Housing Crisis, Brent T. White

Publications

No abstract provided.

Annual Report 2009-2010: Opening Doors, Funding Possibilities, California Housing Finance Agency

California Agencies

No abstract provided.

Complaint, Nikolich Et Al V. The Village Of Arlington Heights Illinois, 870 F.Supp.2d 556, Docket No. 1:10-Cv-07395 (Northern District Of Illinois 2012), Allison Bethel, John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic

Court Documents and Proposed Legislation

No abstract provided.

Problems In Mortgage Servicing From Modification To Foreclosure: Hearing Before The S. Comm. On Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, 111th Cong., Nov. 16, 2010 (Statement Of Associate Professor Adam J. Levitin, Geo. U. L. Center), Adam J. Levitin

Testimony Before Congress

The mortgage foreclosure process is beset by a variety of problems. These range from procedural defects (including, but not limited to robosigning) to outright counterfeiting of documents to questions about the validity of private-label mortgage securitizations that could mean that these mortgage-backed securities are not actually backed by any mortgages whatsoever. While the extent of these problems is unknown at present, the evidence is mounting that it is not limited to one-off cases, but that there may be pervasive defects throughout the foreclosure and securitization processes.

The problems in the mortgage market are highly technical, but they are extremely serious. …

Robo-Signing, Chain Of Title, Loss Mitigation, And Other Issues In Mortgage Servicing: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Hous. And Cmty. Opportunity Of The H. Fin. Serv. Comm., 111th Cong., Nov. 18, 2010 (Statement Of Associate Professor Adam J. Levitin, Geo. U. L. Center), Adam J. Levitin

Testimony Before Congress

The US is now in its forth year of a mortgage crisis in which over 3 million families have lost their homes and another 2.5 million are currently scheduled to lose theirs. Repeated government loan modification or refinancing initiatives have failed miserably. To this sad state of affairs, there now come a variety of additional problems: faulty foreclosures due to irregularities ranging from procedural defects (including, but not limited to robosigning) to outright counterfeiting of documents; predatory servicing practices that precipitate borrower defaults and then overcharge for foreclosure services that are ultimately paid for by investors; and questions about the …

Green Cards For Foreign House Buyers: A Way To Help Stabilize Housing Prices, Gregory S. Crespi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The continuing decline in US housing prices is making it difficult to effectively address our nation’s financial and economic problems. Any measures that would serve to help stabilize housing prices without requiring substantial government expenditures merit serious consideration. Richard Lefrak and Gary Shilling have recently set forth in the Wall Street Journal the broad outlines of a proposed change in immigration law that would confer conditional residency and eventually permanent residency upon foreign purchasers of US houses. In this article I present and discuss a modified version of their proposal that is more comprehensive and that seeks to avoid the …

Following Industry's Leed : Municipal Adoption Of Private Green Building Standards, Sarah B. Schindler

Faculty Publications

Local governments are beginning to require new, privately constructed and funded buildings to be “green” buildings. Instead of creating their own, locally-derived definitions of green buildings, many municipalities are adopting an existing private standard created by members of the building industry: LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). This Article explains and assesses the privately promulgated LEED standards. It argues that the translation of LEED standards, which were intended to be voluntary, into law raises several theoretical and practical problems. Specifically, private green building ordinances that rely on LEED do not ensure a reduction in the negative local environmental impacts …

Looking Back And Looking Ahead As The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Turns Thirty-Five: The Role Of Public Disclosure Of Lending Data In A Time Of Financial Crisis, Richard D. Marsico

Articles & Chapters

This article examines the history of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and makes proposals for improving it to help prevent another economic crisis. Passed in 1975, HMDA requires most lenders to disclose information about their home mortgage loans, including the number of home mortgage applications it received; the purpose of each application; the type of loan; the decision on the application; the race, gender, and income of the loan applicant/borrower; the location of the loan and the median income and racial composition of the neighborhood; and the interest rate on the loan. HMDA was originally conceived of as a …

Missouri's Public Defender Crisis: Shouldering The Burden Alone, Sean O'Brien

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

First Principles For And Effective Federal Housing Policy, David Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Landlords Of Last Resort: Should The Government Subsidize The Mortgages Of Privately-Owned, Small Multifamily Buildings?, David Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection And Aesthetic Zoning: A Possible Crack And A Preemptive Repair, Dawn E. Jourdan, Louis G. Tassinary, Russ Parsons

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, the property owner alleged "the Village intentionally demanded a 33-foot easement as a condition of connecting her property to the municipal water supply where the Village required only a 15-foot easement from other similarly situated property owners." The complaint further described the village's demand as "irrational and wholly arbitrary." According to the Seventh Circuit, the property owner could allege an equal protection violation by asserting the state's action was motivated solely by a "spiteful effort to 'get' him for reasons wholly unrelated to any legitimate state objective." On appeal, the Supreme Court agreed, …