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Articles 1 - 30 of 94
Full-Text Articles in Law
Crypto In Real Estate Finance, R. Wilson Freyermuth, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Crypto In Real Estate Finance, R. Wilson Freyermuth, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Faculty Scholarship
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have ushered in a digital gold rush. But all that glitters is not gold. The latest fad is the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to purchase and finance real estate. Typically, crypto real estate transactions begin with the transfer of title for a residential property into a dedicated business entity, such as a limited liability company. Thereafter, an NFT is ‘minted’ and used to represent the ownership interest in that entity. The real property is then marketed online specifying that, to acquire it, one simply purchases the relevant NFT via a blockchain transfer. Crucially, buyers are expected …
Blockchain Real Estate And Nfts, Juliet M. Moringiello, Christopher K. Odinet
Blockchain Real Estate And Nfts, Juliet M. Moringiello, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
Non-fungible tokens (popularly known as NFTs) and blockchains are frequently promoted as the solution to a multitude of property ownership problems. The promise of an immutable blockchain is often touted as a mechanism to resolve disputes over intangible rights, notably intellectual property rights, and even to facilitate quicker and easier real estate transactions.
In this Symposium Article, we question the use of distributed ledger technologies as a method of facilitating and verifying the transfer of physical assets. As our example of an existing transfer method, we use real property law, which is characterized by centuries-old common law rules regarding fractionalized …
Crypto In Real Estate Finance, R. Wilson Freyermuth, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Crypto In Real Estate Finance, R. Wilson Freyermuth, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Faculty Publications
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have ushered in a digital gold rush. But all that glitters is not gold. The latest fad is the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to purchase and finance real estate. Typically, crypto real estate transactions begin with the transfer of title for a residential property into a dedicated business entity, such as a limited liability company. Thereafter, an NFT is ‘minted’ and used to represent the ownership interest in that entity. The real property is then marketed online specifying that, to acquire it, one simply purchases the relevant NFT via a blockchain transfer. Crucially, buyers are expected …
Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne
Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne
Faculty Articles
One in ten adult Americans has turned to the consumer bankruptcy system for help. For almost forty years, the only systematic data collection about the people who file bankruptcy has come from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), for which we serve as co-principal investigators. In this Article, we use CBP data from 2013 to 2019 to describe who is using the bankruptcy system, providing the first comprehensive overview of bankruptcy filers in thirty years. We use principal component analysis to leverage these data to identify distinct groups of people who file bankruptcy. This technique allows us to situate the distinctions …
Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne
Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne
Scholarly Works
One in ten adult Americans have turned to the consumer bankruptcy system for help. For the past almost forty years, the only systematic data collection about the people who file bankruptcy comes from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), for which we serve as co-principal investigators. In this Article, we use CBP data from 2013 to 2019 to describe who is using the bankruptcy system, providing the first comprehensive overview of bankruptcy filers in thirty years. We use principal component analysis to leverage these data to identify distinct groups of people who file bankruptcy. This technique allows us to situate the …
Steering Loan Modifications Post-Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet
Steering Loan Modifications Post-Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet
Scholarly Works
As part of federal and state relief programs created during the COVID-19 pandemic, many American households received pauses on their largest debts, particularly on mortgages and student loans. Others may have come to agreements with their lenders, likewise pausing or altering payment on other debts, such as auto loans and credit cards. This relief allowed households to allocate their savings and income to necessary expenses, like groceries, utilities, and medicine. But forbearance does not equal forgiveness. At the end of the various relief periods and moratoria, people will have to resume paying all their debts, the amounts of which may …
Steering Loan Modifications Post-Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet
Steering Loan Modifications Post-Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Articles
As part of federal and state relief programs created during the COVID-19 pandemic, many American households received pauses on their largest debts, particularly on mortgages and student loans. Others may have come to agreements with their lenders, likewise pausing or altering payment on other debts, such as auto loans and credit cards. This relief allowed households to allocate their savings and income to necessary expenses, like groceries, utilities, and medicine. But forbearance does not equal forgiveness. At the end of the various relief periods and moratoria, people will have to resume paying all their debts, the amounts of which may …
A Comparative Analysis Of Mortgage Loan Assignments And A Call For Reform In The United States, Julia Patterson Forrester Rogers
A Comparative Analysis Of Mortgage Loan Assignments And A Call For Reform In The United States, Julia Patterson Forrester Rogers
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
The flow of capital into mortgage loans depends heavily on the ability to transfer those loans. In the United States, Germany, and other countries, mortgage loans are transferred on the secondary market. A loan originator may sell loans to a purchaser who intends to hold the loans and collect payments or to a third party who will pool the loans and issue mortgage-backed securities to investors.
In the United States, assignments of mortgage loans have created legal challenges and have been the subject of much litigation. The transfer and storage of large volumes of paper promissory notes, still the prevailing …
The Debt Collection Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet
The Debt Collection Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet
Scholarly Works
As of May 2020, the United States' reaction to the unique and alarming threat of COVID-19 has partially succeeded in slowing the virus’s spread. Saving people’s lives, however, came at a severe economic cost. Americans’ economic anxiety understandably spiked. In addition to worrying about meeting basic expenses, people’s anxieties about money necessarily included what might happen if they could not cover already outstanding debts. The nearly 70 million Americans with debts already in collection faced heightened anxiety about their inability to pay.
The coronavirus pandemic is set to metastasize into a debt collection pandemic. The federal government can and should …
Inclusive Economics And Home Loan Policies For Informal Workers, Kim Vu-Dinh
Inclusive Economics And Home Loan Policies For Informal Workers, Kim Vu-Dinh
Faculty Scholarship
The United States has been suffering from a housing crisis that existed long before the proliferation of sub-prime loans and the Great Recession of 2008-2009. For decades, millions of gainfully employed workers have been institutionally excluded from homeownership, simply because they work in the informal economy. Because of this, the economic growth of households in this demographic has been stymied by discriminatory banking policies that heavily prioritize short-term profit maximization over borrower reliability, or loan viability. Many of those affected are historically disenfranchised people, who systematically have been excluded from the American dream of “a chicken in every pot and …
Regarding Docket No. Fr-6111-P-02, Hud’S Implementation Of The Fair Housing Act’S Disparate Impact Standard, Sonia Gipson Rankin, Alfred Mathewson, Melanie Moses, G. Matthew Fricke, Kathy Powers, Gabriel R. Sanchez, Christopher Moore, Elizabeth Bradley, Mirta Galesic, Joshua Garland
Regarding Docket No. Fr-6111-P-02, Hud’S Implementation Of The Fair Housing Act’S Disparate Impact Standard, Sonia Gipson Rankin, Alfred Mathewson, Melanie Moses, G. Matthew Fricke, Kathy Powers, Gabriel R. Sanchez, Christopher Moore, Elizabeth Bradley, Mirta Galesic, Joshua Garland
Faculty Scholarship
The is a Comment on the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Proposed Rule: FR-6111-P-02 HUD’s Implementation of the Fair Housing Act’s Disparate Impact Standard . This comment examines how algorithms in housing applications may be inherently biased against certain groups of people.
Their arguments against the proposed legislation:
1. To ensure that an algorithm does not have disparate impact, it is not enough to show that individual input factors are not “substitutes or close proxies” for protected characteristics.
2. It is impossible to audit an algorithm for bias without an adequate level of transparency or access to the …
Shadowing Lenders And Consumers: The Rise, Regulation, And Risks Of Non-Banks, Shelby D. Green
Shadowing Lenders And Consumers: The Rise, Regulation, And Risks Of Non-Banks, Shelby D. Green
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Since the financial crisis of 2008, “shadow banking” or financial transactions by “non-banks,” has skyrocketed. Non-banks are not depositary institutions and as such, they roam free, largely outside the purview of the bank regulators. They occupy all parts of the credit markets, from mortgage loan origination to payday lenders. Untethered, they operate without government guarantees, such as deposit insurance and have no access to emergency government lending facilities, such as the Federal Reserve's discount window.
There are both positives and negatives in the rise of non-banks. On the positive side is market liquidity and greater diversity of funding sources for …
Consumer Bitcredit And Fintech Lending, Christopher K. Odinet
Consumer Bitcredit And Fintech Lending, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
The digital economy is changing everything, including how we borrow money. In the wake of the 2008 crisis, banks pulled back in their lending and, as a result, many consumers and small businesses found themselves unable to access credit. A wave of online firms called fintech lenders have filled the space left vacant by traditional financial institutions. These platforms are fast making antiques out of many mainstream lending practices, such as long paper applications and face-to-face meetings. Instead, through underwriting by automation — utilizing big data (including social media data) and machine learning — loan processing that once took days …
Postal Banking's Public Benefits, Mehrsa Baradaran
Postal Banking's Public Benefits, Mehrsa Baradaran
Scholarly Works
The basic idea of postal banking is to have a public bank that would offer a wide range of transaction services, including deposit-taking and small lending. Post offices could offer these services at a much lower cost than banks and the fringe banking industry because (1) they can use natural economies of scale and scope to lower the costs of the products; (2) their existing infrastructure significantly reduces overhead costs, and (3) they do not have profit-demanding shareholders and would be able to offer products at cost.
Testing Fannie Mae's And Freddie Mac's Post-Crisis Self-Preservation Policies Under The Fair Housing Act, Shelby D. Green
Testing Fannie Mae's And Freddie Mac's Post-Crisis Self-Preservation Policies Under The Fair Housing Act, Shelby D. Green
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government adopted programs and policies toward safe and decent housing for all. The initiatives included the creation of the Federal Housing Administration that, among other things, spurred mortgage lending by guaranteeing mortgage loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers. The creation of the secondary mortgage market by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (“GSEs”) helped provide more liquidity for loan originators. However, somewhere along the way, these GSEs lost their way, as they pursued profitability without regard to risk and heedlessly bought mortgages without considering quality.
The overabundance of poor quality mortgages led to the housing …
Financial Reform: Making The System Safer And Fairer, Michael S. Barr
Financial Reform: Making The System Safer And Fairer, Michael S. Barr
Articles
In the fall of 2008, the financial crisis crushed the U.S. economy and plunged the country into the Great Recession. The crisis shuttered American businesses, cost millions of Americans their jobs, and wiped out home values and household savings. The macro effects hit hardest and were the longest lasting for those least able to bear the brunt of the crisis. It was devastating to middle-income families and perhaps even more so to low- and moderate-income households, who had little financial buffer (Barr 2012a). Financial stability, never robust for these families, dropped precipitously (Barr and Schaffa 2016). Both in the United …
Calling On The Cfpb For Help: Telling Stories And Consumer Protection, Pamela Foohey
Calling On The Cfpb For Help: Telling Stories And Consumer Protection, Pamela Foohey
Scholarly Works
Since it began operating in 2011, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has handled more than a million complaints regarding consumer financial product and services. Beginning in June 2015, the CFPB began publishing consumers’ narratives submitted with their complaints. This Article analyses a random sample of 5,000 of these narratives to assess how people engage with the complaint mechanism in light of the CFPB’s role in processing complaints. I find that people predominately use the complaint function for two distinct purposes: to express their anger and frustration about companies’ practices, or to express sadness and fear about how companies’ practices …
Dividing The Single Indivisible Transaction: Balancing The Interests Of Mortgagees And Innocent Occupants, Vincent Ooi
Dividing The Single Indivisible Transaction: Balancing The Interests Of Mortgagees And Innocent Occupants, Vincent Ooi
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
When a mortgagee provides the funds necessary to purchase a property, the law protects the priority of the mortgagee’s security interest from any other interests in the property created after that property was purchased (unless consented to by the mortgagee). The House of Lords affirmed this principle in Abbey National Building Society v Cann (‘Cann’), and rejected the technical argument based on a scintilla temporis in favour of the policy argument concerning the need to ensure that housing loans are available and affordable. The effect of this principle is to allow the mortgagee to enforce the security interest in the …
Super-Liens To The Rescue? A Case Against Special Districts In Real Estate Finance, Christopher K. Odinet
Super-Liens To The Rescue? A Case Against Special Districts In Real Estate Finance, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
In a time of limited resources and sluggish economic growth, competition between cities has become palpable, and the race for new investment often dictates the public agenda. To that end, the explosive growth of public-private partnerships between local governments and private investors has resulted in the creation of a myriad of special taxing districts, the purposes of which are limited only by the imagination. Of particular concern has been the growth of certain real estate development-related districts. Although first conceived to fund critical improvements where conventional credit was not available, in more recently years these special districts have been used …
Usury And Loan Transfers, Roger Bernhardt, Alex Volkov
Usury And Loan Transfers, Roger Bernhardt, Alex Volkov
Publications
This Article is primarily concerned with the effect of transferring a mortgage loan from its originating loan broker to a group of small investors when that loan was at its inception usurious. However, because the rules applicable to that situation are not confined to mortgage law, we begin with a general explanation of usury rules before dealing with the particular real estate loan transaction mentioned.
Vol. 5 No. 2, Spring 2014; "You Can't Handle The Truth" . . . Well, The States That Is: The Legality Of State-Imposed Transfer Taxes On Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, And The Federal Housing Finance Agency, Lars Okmark
Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Congress to help stabilize the housing market. Congress included an express exemption from all taxation imposed by states, counties, and municipalities, albeit real property owned by Fannie and Freddie. In 2008, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), a similarly exempt government entity, became conservator of the federally chartered entities. Across the United States, Fannie and Freddie purchase mortgages to ensure all families have access to affordable housing. This is where the problem lies: when Fannie and Freddie offer the deed for recording, localities attempt to tax the recording of the deed. This …
Social Hierarchies And The Formation Of Customary Property Law In Pre-Industrial China And England, Taisu Zhang
Social Hierarchies And The Formation Of Customary Property Law In Pre-Industrial China And England, Taisu Zhang
Faculty Scholarship
Comparative lawyers and economists have often assumed that traditional Chinese laws and customs reinforced the economic and political dominance of elites and, therefore, were unusually “despotic” towards the poor. Such assumptions are highly questionable: Quite the opposite, one of the most striking characteristics of Qing and Republican property institutions is that they often gave significantly greater economic protection to the poorer segments of society than comparable institutions in early modern England. In particular, Chinese property customs afforded much stronger powers of redemption to landowners who had pawned their land. In both societies, land-pawning occurred far more frequently among poorer households …
Mers Remains Afloat In A Sea Of Foreclosures, Shelby D. Green
Mers Remains Afloat In A Sea Of Foreclosures, Shelby D. Green
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Despite the simple premise of the MERS System, opponents--or those simply trying to invalidate or forestall enforcement of their mortgages--have leveled various challenges to MERS's practices and even its basic business model. Taking an aerial view of the challenges, it is possible to discern a certain pattern as one challenge seemed to morph into the next (often following rejection of the earlier one in the courts). Some borrowers have asserted that MERS lacked legal standing to foreclose because it was a mere nominee and not the owner of the note. Even if MERS's legal standing was upheld, borrowers pointed to …
“Owner Finance! No Banks Needed!” Consumer Protection Analysis Of Seller-Financed Home Sales: A Texas Case Study, Genevieve Hebert Fajardo
“Owner Finance! No Banks Needed!” Consumer Protection Analysis Of Seller-Financed Home Sales: A Texas Case Study, Genevieve Hebert Fajardo
Faculty Articles
Seller-financing of residential property is booming in the credit crisis. Due in part to tightened lending standards for traditional mortgages, low-income home buyers are being shut out of the mortgage market, and are turning to contract-for-deed or lease-to-own agreements to finance their home purchases. In Texas, the state legislature tried to curb abuses in the seller-financed housing market by enacting a mix of typical consumer protection laws: required disclosures, penalties for unfair practices, and a process for converting contracts for deed into mortgages. So why do so many abuses remain in seller-financed transactions, when the legislation checked all the consumer-friendly …
Seeing Past Emergencies: The Institutionalization Of State-Level Debtor Protections, Emily Zackin
Seeing Past Emergencies: The Institutionalization Of State-Level Debtor Protections, Emily Zackin
Schmooze 'tickets'
No abstract provided.
It Takes A Village: Municipal Condemnation Proceedings And Public/Private Partnerships For Mortgage Loan Modification, Value Preservation, And Local Economic Recovery, Robert C. Hockett
It Takes A Village: Municipal Condemnation Proceedings And Public/Private Partnerships For Mortgage Loan Modification, Value Preservation, And Local Economic Recovery, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Respected real estate analysts forecast that the U.S. is now poised to experience a renewed round of home mortgage foreclosures over the coming six years. Up to eleven million underwater mortgages will be affected. Neither our families, our neighborhoods, nor our state and national economies can bear a resumption of crisis on this order of magnitude.
I argue that ongoing and self-worsening slump in the primary and secondary mortgage markets is rooted in a host of recursive collective action challenges structurally akin to those that brought on the real estate bubble and bust in the first place. Collective action problems …
Past Consideration Or Unconnected Consideration, Yihan Goh, Man Yip
Past Consideration Or Unconnected Consideration, Yihan Goh, Man Yip
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
It is trite law that a valid and enforceable contract must be supported by consideration. The recent Court of Appeal case of Rainforest Trading Ltd v State Bank of India Singapore [2012] 2 SLR 713 is a further addition to the local jurisprudence on consideration, specifically the issue of past consideration. This note considers the specific issue of past consideration and argues that its label should be discarded in favour of a more realistic one that correctly emphasises its underlying concerns.
Living With Tied Priority, Roger Bernhardt
Living With Tied Priority, Roger Bernhardt
Publications
This article analyzes a recent California appellate decision holding that two lenders had equal priority because their mortgages were deemed received by the county recorder’s office at the same time when the overnight mail was opened.
Is China's Housing Market Heading Toward A Us-Style Crash?, Gregory M. Stein
Is China's Housing Market Heading Toward A Us-Style Crash?, Gregory M. Stein
Scholarly Works
This article aims to determine whether China is heading toward a U.S.-style market crash in its housing market. Rather than attempting to maintain any suspense, I will disclose here that my conclusion is, 'Who knows?' China and the United States have dramatically different histories, cultures, governments, economies, and legal systems. Anyone who claims to have a definitive answer to this question is overly confident.
My more modest goals in this article are to examine the available evidence and see which way it seems to point. The article begins by listing and describing several different ways in which the American housing …
Behaviorally Informed Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
Behaviorally Informed Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
Book Chapters
Policy makers typically approach human behavior from the perspective of the rational agent model, which relics on normativc, a priori analyses. The model assumes people make insightful, well-planned, highly controlled, and calculated decisions guided by considerations of personal utility. This perspective is promoted in the social sciences and in professional schools and has come to dominate much of the formulation and conduct of policy. An alternative view, developed mostly through empirical behavioral research, and the one we will articulate here, provides a substantially difierent perspective on individual behavior and its policy and regulatory implications. According to the empirical perspective, behavior …