New Book: High-Risk Lending, Deregulation, and the Undermining of America’s Mortgage Market

Posted by on August 10, 2009

[posted from Comm-Org list]

From:  “Immergluck, Daniel W” <[email protected]>

Apologies for cross posting.

Now Available.

FORECLOSED
High-Risk Lending, Deregulation, and the Undermining of America’s Mortgage Market
by Dan Immergluck

Cornell University Press
$29.95 cloth
2009
ISBN: 978-0-8014-4772-3

Publisher site: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=5385

Over the last two years, the United States has observed, with some horror, the explosion and collapse of entire segments of the housing market, especially those driven by subprime and alternative or “exotic” home mortgage lending. The unfortunately timely Foreclosed explains the rise of high-risk lending and why these newer types of loans-and their associated regulatory infrastructure-failed in substantial ways. Dan Immergluck narrates the boom in subprime and exotic loans, recounting how financial innovations and deregulation facilitated excessive risk-taking, and how these loans have harmed different populations and communities.

Immergluck, who has been working, researching, and writing on issues tied to housing finance and neighborhood change for almost twenty years, has an intimate knowledge of the promotion of homeownership and the history of mortgages in the United States. The changes to the mortgage market over the past fifteen years-including the securitization of mortgages and the failure of regulators to maintain control over a much riskier array of mortgage products led, he finds, inexorably to the current crisis.

After describing the development of generally stable and risk-limiting mortgage markets throughout much of the twentieth century, Foreclosed details how federal policy-makers failed to regulate the new high-risk lending markets that arose in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The book also examines federal, state, and local efforts to deal with the mortgage and foreclosure crisis of 2007 and 2008. Immergluck draws upon his wealth of experience to provide an overarching set of principles and a detailed set of policy recommendations for “righting the ship” of U.S. housing finance in ways that will promote affordable yet sustainable homeownership as an option for a broad set of households and communities.

Reviews

“Foreclosed is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how the mortgage market really works and the sources of the current mortgage market meltdown.”

-Susan M. Wachter, Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management, Professor of Real Estate and Finance, and Co-Director, Institute for Urban Research, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

“Foreclosed will elicit a chorus of thank-yous to Dan Immergluck. In this clear and compelling analysis, the
roots of the subprime crisis are untangled with precision and sophistication. This timely effort is sure to become a key resource to those who wonder what happened and why, and what needs to be done to prevent future catastrophes.”

-Rachel Bratt, Tufts University

“Foreclosed is a well-documented and engaging account of how the United States built and then, by dismantling safeguards and ignoring the consequences of unbridled complexity, destroyed one of the world’s most effective and democratic housing systems. The Obama administration should carefully consider Dan Immergluck’s suggestions for getting that system back on track and for bringing back the neighborhoods destroyed by misguided policies and practices of the past several decades.”

-Ellen Seidman, Senior Fellow in the Asset Building Program of the New America Foundation

“Foreclosed is accessible, comprehensive, informative, and insightful. It provides a critical but balanced analysis of the current mortgage crisis, its origins, consequences, and solutions. It is very well written and will appeal to a broad audience including policymakers, policy analysts, bankers, and lawyers. Dan Immergluck’s recommendations couldn’t be more timely.”

-Alex Schwartz, Milano The New School for Management, author of Housing Policy in the United States

About the Author

Dan Immergluck is Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author most recently of Credit to the Community: Community Reinvestment and Fair Lending Policy in the U.S. Immergluck has testified before the U.S. Congress, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, federal agencies, and state and local legislative bodies.

Dan Immergluck
Associate Professor
City and Regional Planning Program
College of Architecture
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0155
(404) 385-7214
[email protected]