Remarks by Eric S. Rosengren, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, for the Federal Reserve Conference on REO and Vacant Property Strategies for Neighborhood Stabilization, Washington, D.C., September 2, 2010

Opening remarks by Eric S. Rosengren, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, at the conference, “Understanding the Housing Collapse: What is to Blame and What Can Be Done?”, co-sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston,...

Remarks by Eric S. Rosengren, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, for the Federal Reserve Conference on REO and Vacant Property Strategies for Neighborhood Stabilization, Washington, D.C., September 2, 2010

Opening remarks by Eric S. Rosengren, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, at the conference, “Understanding the Housing Collapse: What is to Blame and What Can Be Done?”, co-sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston,...

This paper explores the question of whether market participants could have or should have anticipated the large increase in foreclosures that occurred in 2007 and 2008. Most of these foreclosures stem from loans originated in 2005 and 2006, leading many to suspect that lenders originated a large...

In a recent set of influential papers, researchers have argued that residential mortgage foreclosures reduce the sale prices of nearby properties. We revisit this issue using a more robust identification strategy combined with new data that contain information on the location of properties...

The authors evaluate laws designed to protect borrowers from foreclosure. They find that these laws delay but do not prevent foreclosures. They first compare states that require lenders to seek judicial permission to foreclose with states that do not. Borrowers in judicial states are no more...

This paper takes a skeptical look at a leading argument about what is causing the foreclosure crisis and what should be done to stop it. We use an economic model to focus on two key decisions: the borrower’s choice to default on the mortgage and the lender’s choice on whether to renegotiate...

We document the fact that servicers have been reluctant to renegotiate mortgages since the foreclosure crisis started in 2007, having performed payment-reducing modifications on only about 3 percent of seriously delinquent loans. We show that this reluctance does not result from securitization:...