We design a digital home mortgage and title registry system, overseen by a new public sector entity, to provide clearing and settlement efficiencies in mortgage-related instruments comparable to those enabled by the Depository Trust Company (‘DTC') in other investment securities. We believe...

This brief invited essay lays out in summary form the eminent domain plan for securitized underwater mortgage loans that the author has been advocating and helping to implement for some years now. It does so with particular attention in this case to New York City, which is now actively...

This White Paper provides background information and explanation in support of passage of the statute that we have drafted -- the Home Mortgage Bridge Loan Assistance Act of 2012 -- by the legislature of New York. Many homeowners now faced with the threat of foreclosure are only temporarily in...

Many homeowners now faced with the threat of foreclosure are only temporarily in distress owing to temporary income loss rooted in unemployment or underemployment. In consequence many foreclosures, along with their many harmful effects upon home prices as well as neighborhoods and families, can...

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...

Respected real estate analysts now forecast that the U.S. is poised to experience a renewed round of home mortgage foreclosures over the coming 6 years. Up to 11 million underwater mortgages will be affected. Neither our families, our neighborhoods, nor our state and national economies can bear...

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...

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...