This paper seeks to fill a gap in the real estate finance literature by linking the well-known history of the Anglo-American mortgage recorded by legal scholars with the recent literature on security design and incomplete contracting in order to explain and evaluate several unique features of...

In standard principal-agent problems, the issue at hand is how to align the interests of the agent with those of her principal. A commonly used contract involves the principal paying the agent a percentage of the sale price as commission. With respect to real estate brokerage conracts, it has...

Equitable redemption is a feature of all common law mortgages that allows a borrower a chance to redeem the real estate in the event of default. What is puzzling is that equitable redemption is universally enforced in all mortgages, including commercial mortgages. The purpose of this study is to...