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Foreclosures

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Learning To Do Good While Doing Well 11-2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law Nov 2023

Learning To Do Good While Doing Well 11-2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Takings In Disguise: The Inequity Of Public Nuisance Receiverships In America’S Rust Belt, Anna Kennedy Oct 2023

Takings In Disguise: The Inequity Of Public Nuisance Receiverships In America’S Rust Belt, Anna Kennedy

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Since they were created in the 1980s in Cleveland, Ohio, public nuisance receiverships have spread across the American Rust Belt. This Note critically analyzes the legal implications of public nuisance receiverships, which involve the intrusion onto private property for public purposes. Despite claims that these actions align with exceptions to due process or public nuisance principles, a deeper examination reveals their fundamental nature as government takings of private property. This Note dissects the legal framework within the context of the Fifth Amendment, debunking the applicability of the public nuisance exception, establishing that receiverships constitute takings, and highlighting conflicts with Anti-Kelo …


The Rental Crisis Will Not Be Televised: The Case For Protecting Tenants Under Consumer Protection Regimes, Eric Sirota Apr 2021

The Rental Crisis Will Not Be Televised: The Case For Protecting Tenants Under Consumer Protection Regimes, Eric Sirota

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Foreclosure Crisis of the 2000s has likely hurt renters more than homeowners. Incongruously, however, consumer enforcement agencies have been far more zealous in protecting mortgagors than tenants. This Article explores the under-protection of tenants as a class of consumers, particularly in a “commoditized” rental market, and examines how consumer enforcement agencies can more zealously incorporate tenant-protection into their mandates.

Much of the prior literature on the legal protections afforded tenants was published in the wake of the consumer rights revolution of the 1970s. This Article is the first to carefully reexamine, in the context of the modern rental market, …


Dispossessing Resident Voice: Municipal Receiverships And The Public Trust, Juliet M. Moringiello Jan 2020

Dispossessing Resident Voice: Municipal Receiverships And The Public Trust, Juliet M. Moringiello

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The residents of struggling cities suffer property dispossessions both as individual owners and as municipal residents. Their individual dispossessions are part of a cycle that often begins with industrial decline. In Detroit, for example, more than 100,000 residents have lost their homes to tax foreclosure over a four-year period that bracketed the city’s bankruptcy filing. Falling property values, job losses, and foreclosures affect municipal budgets by reducing tax revenues. As individual dispossessions exacerbate municipal financial crises, residents can also face the loss of municipal property. Struggling cities and towns often sell publicly owned property—from parks to parking systems—to balance municipal …


Dispossessing Detroit: How The Law Takes Property, Mary Kathlin Sickel Jan 2020

Dispossessing Detroit: How The Law Takes Property, Mary Kathlin Sickel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Introduction for the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform's Symposium “Dispossessing Detroit: How the Law Takes Property,” hosted on November 9 and 10, 2019.


Facing The Facts: An Empirical Study Of The Fairness And Efficiency Of Foreclosures And A Proposal For Reform, Debra Pogrund Stark Dec 2018

Facing The Facts: An Empirical Study Of The Fairness And Efficiency Of Foreclosures And A Proposal For Reform, Debra Pogrund Stark

Debra Pogrund Stark

Lenders view real estate foreclosures as too expensive and time consuming a process which needlessly increases the costs of making loans. Others complain that the foreclosure process fails to adequately protect the borrower's equity (the value of the property in excess of the debt secured by the property) in the mortgaged property.

This article tests these views by gathering new data on the fairness and efficiency of the foreclosure process. Based on the data collected (which confirms some assumptions but disproves others), the author proposes a reform of the foreclosure process to promote the interest of both lenders and borrowers. …


Testing Fannie Mae's And Freddie Mac's Post-Crisis Self-Preservation Policies Under The Fair Housing Act, Shelby D. Green May 2018

Testing Fannie Mae's And Freddie Mac's Post-Crisis Self-Preservation Policies Under The Fair Housing Act, Shelby D. Green

Cleveland State Law Review

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 …


Why Flexibility Matters: Inequality And Contract Pluralism, Jeremiah A. Ho Jan 2017

Why Flexibility Matters: Inequality And Contract Pluralism, Jeremiah A. Ho

Faculty Publications

In the decade since the Great Recession, various contract scholars have observed that one reason the financial crisis was so “great” was due in part to contract law—or, more precisely, the failures of contract law for not curbing the risky lending practices in the American housing market. However, there is another reason why contracts made that recession so great: contracts furthered inequality. In recent years, when economic inequality has become a dominant national conversation topic, we can see development of that inequality in the Great Recession. And indeed, contract law was complicit. While contractual flexibility and innovation were available to …


Community Land Trusts: A Powerful Vehicle For Development Without Displacement, May Louie Sep 2016

Community Land Trusts: A Powerful Vehicle For Development Without Displacement, May Louie

Trotter Review

In the Great Recession of 2007–2009, Boston’s communities of color were hit hard. A 2009 map of foreclosures looked like a map of the communities of color—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. The one island of stability was a section of Roxbury called the Dudley Triangle—home to the community land trust of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI).

Originally established to respond to the community’s vision of “development without displacement,” the land trust model was adopted to help residents gain control of land and to use that control to prevent families from being priced out as they organized to improve their neighborhood. …


The Unfinished Business Of Dodd-Frank: Reforming The Mortgage Contract, Christopher K. Odinet Jul 2016

The Unfinished Business Of Dodd-Frank: Reforming The Mortgage Contract, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

The standard residential mortgage contract is due for a reappraisal. The goals of Dodd-Frank and the CFPB are geared toward creating better stability in the residential mortgage market, in part, by mandating more robust underwriting. This is achieved chiefly through the ability-to-repay rules and the “qualified mortgage” safe harbor, which call for very conservative underwriting criteria to be applied to new mortgage loans. And lenders are whole-heartedly embracing these criteria in their loan originations — in the fourth quarter of 2015 over 98% of all new residential loans were qualified mortgages, thus resulting in a new wave of credit-worthy homeowners …


Second Chances For The Second City's Vacant Properties: An Analysis Of Chicago's Policy Approaches To Vacancy, Abandonment, & Blight, Elizabeth Butler Jan 2016

Second Chances For The Second City's Vacant Properties: An Analysis Of Chicago's Policy Approaches To Vacancy, Abandonment, & Blight, Elizabeth Butler

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Addressing the externalities of vacancy and blight is a major challenge for the Chicago metropolitan area. While neighborhoods on the South and West sides of Chicago struggle with blight, neglect, and abandonment, downtown Chicago and the northern neighborhoods and suburbs experience stronger market conditions. This crisis has amplified entrenched socioeconomic divisions and ultimately burdens the entire region by perpetuating a cycle of poverty, violence, and physical and social disorder that tarnish Chicago’s image.

This Note outlines Chicago’s vacant property challenge by discussing the history of urban decline in Chicago. It examines factors that led to a high level of vacant …


The Subprime Market Roller Coaster, Willa E. Gibson Sep 2014

The Subprime Market Roller Coaster, Willa E. Gibson

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Please find attached an essay entitled “The Subprime Market Roller Coaster.” The essay discusses the economic and societal implications of the subprime market losses with an emphasis on the federal regulators’ inability to curtail such losses. It discusses collateralized mortgage obligations and how these debt securities fueled the subprime market. The essay discusses how each of the players – lenders, debtors, investment bankers, securities firms and investors – speculated on homes whose values were a mere illusion. It describes how each party along the chain starting with the lender used basic risk-shifting principles to engage in reckless speculation assuming they …


The Constitutionality Of Using Eminent Domain To Condemn Underwater Mortgage Loans, Katharine Roller Oct 2013

The Constitutionality Of Using Eminent Domain To Condemn Underwater Mortgage Loans, Katharine Roller

Michigan Law Review

One of the most visible and devastating components of the financial crisis that began in 2007 and 2008 has been a nationwide foreclosure crisis. In the wake of ultimately ineffective attempts at federal policy intervention to address the foreclosure crisis, a private firm has proposed that counties and municipalities use their power of eminent domain to seize “underwater” mortgage loans—-mortgage loans in which the debt exceeds the value of the underlying property—-from the private securitization trusts that currently hold them. Having condemned the mortgage loans, the counties and municipalities would reduce the debt to a level below the value of …


Seeing Past Emergencies: The Institutionalization Of State-Level Debtor Protections, Emily Zackin Feb 2013

Seeing Past Emergencies: The Institutionalization Of State-Level Debtor Protections, Emily Zackin

Schmooze 'tickets'

No abstract provided.


Eminent Domain For The Seizure Of Underwater Mortgages, Sarah Thompson Jan 2013

Eminent Domain For The Seizure Of Underwater Mortgages, Sarah Thompson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Like many cities in the United States, Richmond, California suffered greatly from the recent mortgage crisis. The foreclosure crisis hit Richmond hard in 2009, when more than 2,000 homes in Richmond went into foreclosure. This figure is especially shocking given that there were 18,659 owner-occupied housing units in the city at that time. In 2012, the city saw an additional 914 foreclosures and a foreclosure rate of thirty out of 1,000 homes (well above the national average of thirteen of every 1,000 homes). Today, it is reported that nearly forty-six percent of homes in Richmond are “underwater,” meaning that what …


Mortgage Foreclosure, By Charles Hastings Wiltsie, Robert C. Brown Dec 2012

Mortgage Foreclosure, By Charles Hastings Wiltsie, Robert C. Brown

Dr Robert Brown

No abstract provided.


Avoiding A Lawyers' Race To The Foreclosure Bottom: Some Advice To Lawyers For Lenders And Borrowers On Their Roles In Foreclosure Litigation, James Geoffrey Durham Jun 2012

Avoiding A Lawyers' Race To The Foreclosure Bottom: Some Advice To Lawyers For Lenders And Borrowers On Their Roles In Foreclosure Litigation, James Geoffrey Durham

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Lawyers for lenders and borrowers are joining their clients in questionable actions in foreclosure litigation as a massive number of borrower defaults have led to a flood of lawsuits. This article describes some of the practices lawyers for lenders and borrowers have undertaken in this race to the bottom likely rationalized by “the ends justify the means” and “everyone else is doing it, why can’t I?” It goes on to outline the minimum standards set by the rules of legal ethics and to describe just what foreclosure lawyers should be doing. The lessons are not new, but the foreclosure crisis …


Two Faces: Demystifying The Mortgage Electronic Registration System's Land Title Theory, Christopher L. Peterson Oct 2011

Two Faces: Demystifying The Mortgage Electronic Registration System's Land Title Theory, Christopher L. Peterson

William & Mary Law Review

In the mid-1990s, mortgage bankers created Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) to escape the costs associated with recording mortgage transfers. To accomplish this, lenders permanently list MERS as the mortgagee of record instead of themselves to avoid the expense of recording any subsequent transfers. MERS’s claim that it is both an agent of the lender and the mortgagee, and the huge gaps left in the public record, give rise to a range of legal issues. This Article addresses whether security agreements naming MERS as a mortgagee meet traditional conveyance requirements and discusses the rights of counties to recover unpaid …


Mers: Creating Efficiencies Or Clouding Titles? Examining Challenges To The Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Christian Carson Apr 2011

Mers: Creating Efficiencies Or Clouding Titles? Examining Challenges To The Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Christian Carson

Christian Carson

The Mortgage Electronic Registration System has recently come under fire amidst the recent foreclosure crisis. Since MERS is mortgagee of record to more than 60 million mortgages in the United States, the question as to whether it has standing to foreclose on defaulted loans presents a hurdle to the speedy recovery of the housing market.

It is likely that the MERS framework is a sound one that complies with longstanding principles of property and agency law. Examination of the controlling Supreme Court case Carpenter v. Longan and Restatement commentary reveals that a separation of the mortgage and the note does …


Why Foreclosure Robo-Signers Should Be Everyone's Concern, Juliet Moringiello Oct 2010

Why Foreclosure Robo-Signers Should Be Everyone's Concern, Juliet Moringiello

Juliet M Moringiello

No abstract provided.


The Newly-Enacted Cplr 3408 For Easing The Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis: Very Good Steps, But Not Legislatively Perfect, Mark C. Dillon Apr 2010

The Newly-Enacted Cplr 3408 For Easing The Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis: Very Good Steps, But Not Legislatively Perfect, Mark C. Dillon

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.


Simultaneous Distress Of Residential Developers And Their Secured Lenders An Analysis Of Bankruptcy & Bank Regulation , Sarah Pei Woo Jan 2010

Simultaneous Distress Of Residential Developers And Their Secured Lenders An Analysis Of Bankruptcy & Bank Regulation , Sarah Pei Woo

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.


No Tax For "Phantom Income": How Congress Failed To Encourage Responsible Housing Consumption With Its Recent Tax Legislation, Rue Toland Dec 2009

No Tax For "Phantom Income": How Congress Failed To Encourage Responsible Housing Consumption With Its Recent Tax Legislation, Rue Toland

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In the midst of the recent housing crisis, Congress passed two key pieces of federal tax legislation in an attempt to stem the tide of foreclosures and prevent further economic collapse. These two bills, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act in 2007 and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act in 2008, both sought competing goals: lessening the harm to existing homeowners, and encouraging purchases by new homebuyers. However, neither bill adequately addressed one of the root causes of the housing crisis, namely homeowners obtaining mortgages that, for whatever reason, they could not afford. Indeed, the tax incentives these bills created …


Can't Live Without Air: Title Insurance And The Bursting Of The Real Estate Bubble, Marvin N. Bagwell Sep 2009

Can't Live Without Air: Title Insurance And The Bursting Of The Real Estate Bubble, Marvin N. Bagwell

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.


Smoke And Mirrors: Predatory Lending And The Subprime Mortgage Loan Securitization Pyramid Scheme, Navid Vazire Sep 2009

Smoke And Mirrors: Predatory Lending And The Subprime Mortgage Loan Securitization Pyramid Scheme, Navid Vazire

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.


A Superfund Solution For An Economic Love Canal, Mehmet K. Konar-Steenberg Sep 2009

A Superfund Solution For An Economic Love Canal, Mehmet K. Konar-Steenberg

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Importance Of Deceptive Practice Enforcement In Financial Institution Regulation, Prentiss Cox Sep 2009

The Importance Of Deceptive Practice Enforcement In Financial Institution Regulation, Prentiss Cox

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.


Real Property, Mortgages, And The Economy: A Call For Ethics And Reforms, Shelby D. Green Sep 2009

Real Property, Mortgages, And The Economy: A Call For Ethics And Reforms, Shelby D. Green

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.


State Subprime Lending Litigation And Federal Preemption: Toward A National Standard, Alan H. Scheiner Sep 2009

State Subprime Lending Litigation And Federal Preemption: Toward A National Standard, Alan H. Scheiner

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.


Mortgage Market Reform And The Fallacy Of Self-Correcting Markets, Robin Paul Malloy Sep 2009

Mortgage Market Reform And The Fallacy Of Self-Correcting Markets, Robin Paul Malloy

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.