IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Do Borrower Rights Improve Borrower Outcomes? Evidence from the Foreclosure Process

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Kristopher Gerardi
  • Lauren Lambie-Hanson
  • Paul S. Willen

Abstract

We evaluate laws designed to protect borrowers from foreclosure. We find that these laws delay but do not prevent foreclosures. We first compare states that require lenders to seek judicial permission to foreclose with states that do not. Borrowers in judicial states are no more likely to cure and no more likely to renegotiate their loans, but the delays lead to a build-up in these states of persistently delinquent borrowers, the vast majority of whom eventually lose their homes. We next analyze a "right-to-cure" law instituted in Massachusetts on May 1, 2008. Using a difference-in-differences approach to evaluate the effect of the policy, we compare Massachusetts with neighboring states that did not adopt similar laws. We find that the right-to-cure law lengthens the foreclosure timeline but does not lead to better outcomes for borrowers.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17666.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 17666.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: Dec 2011
Publication status: published as Gerardi, Kristopher & Lambie-Hanson, Lauren & Willen, Paul S., 2013. "Do borrower rights improve borrower outcomes? Evidence from the foreclosure process," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 1-17.
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17666
Note: EFG
Contact details of provider: Postal:
National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.

Phone: 617-868-3900
Web page: http://www.nber.org
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
  • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
  • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Anthony Pennington-Cross, 2010. "The Duration of Foreclosures in the Subprime Mortgage Market: A Competing Risks Model with Mixing," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 109-129, February.
  2. Christopher Foote & Kristopher Gerardi & Lorenz Goette & Paul Willen, 2010. "Reducing Foreclosures: No Easy Answers," NBER Chapters,in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 89-138 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Acemoglu, Daron & Rogoff, Kenneth & Woodford, Michael (ed.), 2010. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226002095, September.
  4. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi, 2015. "Foreclosures, House Prices, and the Real Economy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(6), pages 2587-2634, December.
  5. Adelino, Manuel & Gerardi, Kristopher & Willen, Paul S., 2013. "Why don't Lenders renegotiate more home mortgages? Redefaults, self-cures and securitization," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 835-853.
  6. Richard A. Phillips & James H. VanderHoff, 2004. "The Conditional Probability of Foreclosure: An Empirical Analysis of Conventional Mortgage Loan Defaults," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 32(4), pages 571-587, December.
  7. Richard A. Phillips & Eric M. Rosenblatt, 1997. "The Legal Environment and the Choice of Default Resolution Alternatives: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 13(2), pages 145-154.
  8. Andra C. Ghent & Marianna Kudlyak, 2011. "Recourse and Residential Mortgage Default: Evidence from US States 1," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(9), pages 3139-3186.
  9. Karen M. Pence, 2006. "Foreclosing on Opportunity: State Laws and Mortgage Credit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(1), pages 177-182, February.
  10. J. Michael Collins & Ken Lam & Christopher E. Herbert, 2011. "State mortgage foreclosure policies and lender interventions: Impacts on borrower behavior in default," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 216-232, Spring.
  11. Zachary K. Kimball & Paul S. Willen, 2012. "US mortgage and foreclosure law," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Palgrave Macmillan.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17666. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ()

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.