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- Underwater mortgages (3)
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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Law
Accidental Suicide Pacts And Creditor Collective Action Problems: The Mortgage Mess, The Deadweight Loss, And How To Get The Value Back, Robert C. Hockett
Accidental Suicide Pacts And Creditor Collective Action Problems: The Mortgage Mess, The Deadweight Loss, And How To Get The Value Back, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Sustained economic recovery will remain elusive in America, post-crash, until principal is reduced on some 10-13 million underwater home mortgage loans across the nation. Yet in the case of privately securitized loans, these write-downs are all but impossible to carry out on the requisite scale because bubble-era securitization contracts, which now effectively function as suicide pacts among bondholders, would require collective action by millions of geographically dispersed passive investors in order to authorize write-downs or sales out of securitization trusts. The solution, this article suggests, is for state and municipal governments to use their eminent domain powers to buy up …
Unborn Communities, Gregory S. Alexander
Unborn Communities, Gregory S. Alexander
Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers
Do property owners owe obligations to members of future generations? Although the question can be reframed in rights-terms so that it faces rights-oriented theories of property, it seems to pose a greater challenge to those theories of property that directly focus on the obligations that property owners owe to others rather than (or, better, along with) the rights of owner. The challenge is compounded where such theories emphasize the relationships between individual property owners and the various communities to which they belong. Do those communities include members of future generations? This paper addresses these questions as they apply to a …
Property's Ends: The Publicness Of Private Law Values, Gregory S. Alexander
Property's Ends: The Publicness Of Private Law Values, Gregory S. Alexander
Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers
Property theorists commonly suppose that property has as its ends certain private values, such as individual autonomy and personal security. This Article contends that property’s real end is human flourishing, that is, living a life that is as fulfilling as possible. Human flourishing, although property’s ultimate end, is neither monistic or simple. Rather, it is inclusive and comprises multiple values. Those values, the content of human flourishing, derives, at least in part, from an understanding of the sorts of beings we are ― social and political. A consequence of this conception of the human condition is that the values of …
Ownership And Obligations: The Human Flourishing Theory Of Property, Gregory S. Alexander
Ownership And Obligations: The Human Flourishing Theory Of Property, Gregory S. Alexander
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Private property ordinarily triggers notions of individual rights, not social obligations. The core image of property rights, in the minds of most people, is that the owner has a right to exclude others and owes no further obligation to them. That image is highly misleading. Property owners owe far more responsibilities to others, both owners and non-owners, than the conventional imagery of property rights suggests. Property rights are inherently relational, and because of this characteristic, owners necessarily owe obligations to others. But the responsibility, or obligation, dimension of private ownership has been sorely under-theorised. Inherent in the concept of ownership …
A Federalist Blessing In Disguise: From National Inaction To Local Action On Underwater Mortgages, Robert C. Hockett, John Vlahoplus
A Federalist Blessing In Disguise: From National Inaction To Local Action On Underwater Mortgages, Robert C. Hockett, John Vlahoplus
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
While it is widely recognized that the mortgage debt overhang left by the housing price bubble and bust continues to operate as the principal drag upon U.S. macroeconomic recovery, few seem to appreciate just how locally concentrated the problem is. This paper takes the measure of the national mortgage debt overhang problem as a cluster of local problems warranting local action. It then elaborates on one form of such action that the localized nature of the ongoing mortgage crisis justifies - use of municipal eminent domain authority to purchase underwater loans, then modify them in a manner that benefits debtors, …
Paying Paul And Robbing No One: An Eminent Domain Solution For Underwater Mortgage Debt, Robert C. Hockett
Paying Paul And Robbing No One: An Eminent Domain Solution For Underwater Mortgage Debt, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
In the view of many analysts, the best way to assist “underwater” homeowners — those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth — is to reduce the principal on their home loans. Yet in the case of privately securitized mortgages, such write-downs are almost impossible to carry out, since loan modifications on the scale necessitated by the housing market crash would require collective action by a multitude of geographically dispersed security holders. The solution, this study suggests, is for state and municipal governments to use their eminent domain powers to buy up and restructure underwater mortgages, …