Mortgage cramdown has been proposed as a mechanism to avoid mortgage foreclosures in times of crisis. In this restructuring, the underwater portion of the mortgage is treated as unsecured debt and can be discharged during Chapter 13 bankruptcy. To quantify the ex-post effects of bankruptcy discharge in cramdown courts, we use a new dataset of district courts that allowed mortgage cramdown over the period from 1989 to 1993.
This paper reviews recent research on mortgage default, focusing on the relationship of this research to the recent foreclosure crisis. Research on defaults was advanced both theoretically and empirically by the time the crisis began, but economists have moved the frontier further by improving data sources, building dynamic optimizing models of default, and explicitly addressing reverse causality between rising foreclosures and falling house prices.
Preliminary Comment:
This is a study commissioned by the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Institute, so not a bunch of wooly-headed, bleeding heart academics. That even it finds tremendous utility in loan modification programs, should not be taken lightly.
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, various mortgage modification programs were introduced to help homeowners struggling to make their monthly mortgage payments remain in their homes.
Abstract:
Since the price peak in 2006, home values have fallen more than 30%, leaving millions of Americans with negative equity in their homes. Until the Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in Nobelman v. American Savings Bank, the bankruptcy system would have provided many such homeowners with a remedy. They could have filed bankruptcy, discharged the negative equity, committed to pay the mortgage holders the full values of their homes, and retained those homes.
Abstract:
Loss mitigation actions (e.g., liquidation, renegotiation) of delinquent mortgages might be hampered by conflicting goals of lenders at different seniority. In particular, a servicer has less incentive to take certain actions to reduce losses of investor-owned first lien mortgages if the servicer happens to own the second lien claim secured by the same property. Rather, the servicer has an incentive to hold up loss mitigation as it seeks to preserve the values of its own, junior, claim.
