Refinancing a first mortgage puts legal principles in conflict when other, junior, liens also exist. On one hand, the … principle that seniority follows time priority leaves the new refinancing mortgage junior to mortgages that were junior to the … original, refinanced first mortgage. On the other hand, the principle of equitable subrogation gives the refinancing mortgage …

refinancing have not done so. We investigate the rates at which, relative to prime borrowers, subprime borrowers seek and take out … refinance loans, conditional on not experiencing mortgage default. We find that starting in 2009, subprime borrowers are about … half as likely as prime borrowers to refinance, although they still shop for mortgage credit, indicating their interest in …

Can social influence effects help explain regional heterogeneity in refinancing activity? Neighborhood social influence … effects have been shown to affect publicly observable decisions, but their role in private decisions, like refinancing …

Home appraisals are produced for millions of residential mortgage transactions each year, but appraised values are … institutional framework that governs mortgage lending lead to information loss in appraisals (that is, appraisals set equal to the … incidence of mortgage default at loan-to-value boundaries (notches) above which mortgage insurance rates increase. Appraisals …

This paper assesses the relative importance of two key drivers of mortgage default: negative equity and illiquidity. To … do so, the authors combine loan-level mortgage data with detailed credit bureau information about the borrower's broader … authors find that both negative equity and illiquidity are significantly associated with mortgage default, with comparably …

This paper explores the link between the house-price expectations of mortgage lenders and the extent of subprime …

Rapid house-price depreciation and rising unemployment were the main drivers of the huge increase in mortgage default … during the downturn years of 2007 to 2010. However, mortgage default was also partly driven by an increased reliance on … alternative mortgage products such as pay-option ARMs and interest-only mortgages, which allow the borrower to defer principal …