Richmond’s rules: Why one California town is keeping Wall Street up at night | Hacker News Reader

Richmond’s rules: Why one California town is keeping Wall Street up at night

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110 pointsMaysonL76 comments

They say using Eminent domain as if thats the solution, take the banks property away.

I am thinking the fallout from this move will be disastrous. These are the ideas that fundamentally change the fabric of a society. Now the Government will use Eminent domain whenever a private entity is acting against the social interests of the citizens, whilst many will applaud such a move I fear it gives the Government and elected officials far too much power.

Also why bother obtaining property and wealth when the Government positions itself as the taker of all things whenever it suits them best?

Now the Government will use Eminent domain whenever a private entity is acting against the social interests of the citizens, whilst many will applaud such a move I fear it gives the Government and elected officials far too much power.

Isn't the purpose of government to protect its citizens when a more powerful entity acts against them?

Also why bother obtaining property and wealth when the Government positions itself as the taker of all things whenever it suits them best?

I agree. That's clearly not what is happening here, though.

For one thing, the people who have taken the mortgage out own at least some of the property, and secondly the banks that hold the mortgages are profiting form fraud (ie, the deliberate strategy of selling sub-prime mortgages to people who couldn't afford them). Finally, this isn't what suits [the government] best. It would suit the local government if the problem could be ignored, which is what other jurisdictions (including at the Federal level) are doing.

"the people who have taken the mortgage out own at least some of the property"

By definition of being underwater they own no equity of value. When a company goes bankrupt, i.e. when a company's equity value hits zero, i.e. when a company's assets are worth less than its liabilities, shareholders are wiped out. At that point they have no residual claim to the assets.

Yeah, but that's an outcome of the way US mortgage system works (ie, the mortgage holder is preferred over other equity holders).

It doesn't have to be this way; for example in the event of a liquidation all parties with an equity interest could have money distributed to them in proportion to the interest the hold.

I actually agree with your last point, but the correct course of action would be for the Government to sue the banks based on this fraud. Using Eminent domain is the nuclear option.

I'd rather see a court where the banks are ripped apart for their crimes, but for some reason this never happened.

I think the analogy "the nuclear option" is unfortunate. But if you remember the cold war, "the nuclear option" always was that: a real, actual option. Warsaw Pact forces in East Germany were far stronger than NATO forces, but they knew NATO policy was to use tactical nukes in the event of an invasion.

From the mortgaged home-occupant point of view, the banks have all the power here. Government power is the only thing they fear, but government power is a fairly blunt stick - governments generally don't intervene in individual cases and have to attempt a systematic solution, and so far it has been very ineffective.

In this case the mere threat of government intervention that will actually help consumers may be enough to change bank policies (if not in Richmond, perhaps elsewhere). I see that as a positive thing, and one that will help correct a distortion in the market.

Not just that, many of the subprime mortgages were missold to people who could actually obtained a much cheaper prime mortgage that would've been less profitable for the bank.

(Often on the basis of race - which is one of the things that makes all the people who blame the Community Reinvestment Act for the mortgage crisis really misguided. All the CRA did was ban redlining, a practice where banks excluded everyone in predominantly-black areas from prime mortgages even if they'd otherwise be eligible, leaving expensive subprime mortgages as their only option.)

I trust corporations much more.

Why yes Mr Dupont, Mr Pinkerton, I'm just move these striking miners over.... <BANG><BANG><BANG> okay, never mind, just call the undertaker.

The whole point is that the Banks were bailed out by Government, yet the struggling homeowners were not. Who looks after them, if not the Government?

I don't think it's going to be that bad. Remember that eminent domain requires the government to pay the fair market value of the property being seized - and conveniently, it's difficult for the banks to disagree with that fair market value, because it's the amount they'd value the houses at when they inevitably foreclosed on them.

Without discussing the merits of this particular case (of which I have no knowledge aside from the article, and the facts might be, as cynicalkane claims, quite different), I'd like to say something about the premise of your argument from a more philosophical point of view.

Elected officials are representatives of the populace. "Government" is, then, is not some alien entity, but at least in principle, the voice of the people. The government is therefore not the taker of all things, but the giver of all things, and let me explain that:

The right to private property isn't a natural law, or even the natural form of human behavior. Human beings started out living in collective tribes. It's not that property was shared, but that there wasn't much property at all. Sure, I guess some men objected forcefully to others taking their women, but the transition from women to material property is certainly not an obvious one.

Only with the advent of agriculture humans started having anything resembling property at all, and it was their decision to allow property to be owned "privately". It was society, or "government" if you will, that created the notion of private property through a social contract in the first place.

So it is society, or government, that graciously allowed you to "own" anything, but that by no means implied that society could not place restriction on ownership. And if you didn't like the rules you were welcome to leave and spend your life away from society.

Sure, this arrangement is pretty much the only one that has worked so far, but there have been many revisions and will be many more. But the premise should not be that society infringes on private property, but that the meaning of private property is constantly re-created and negotiated by society.

government is therefore not the taker of all things, but the giver of all things

It is dangerous to view it literally this way. To think that government and/or society is giving you things, assumes that they owned them to begin with. Government owns your rights, and then "graciously" allow you to exercise them? No.

Government exists to protect your rights. It's an important distinction. You rights to life, liberty, property, etc. are innate to you as a human being (the fact that others in the past have not had this view does not disprove this philosophy), and we created government and the notion of a rule of law to protect those rights.

Of course not all systems of government work this way, we call those that view themselves as the arbitrary "giver of all things" tyrannies.

Of course I used a little hyperbole. Still, property is not innate – it is a social construct. When agriculture started, society decided to allow people to own property. People need society, they don't need property (as they've lived without it for over a million years). Society therefore can define the limits of private possession.

Obviously, we need to take into account that now, unlike 10,000 years ago, people no longer have the option of leaving society completely, so they have little choice in the matter, and in order to restore some of that freedom, private property needs to be protected by law. But again, property is not a natural right; it's a social convention. That should be the premise.

A bit of an aside, are you sure we lived without property for over a million years? Is there evidence property didn't exist? Has the idea been observed, between say, apes? I'll guess that, not codified, the idea has existed for a long time. Just a thought.

They're making the fundamental mistake of fixing a problem now in a way that will cause huge problems in the future.

Mortgage lenders will put huge premiums on mortgages in the town in the future because of "default by eminent domain" risk, if the government pulls freddie/fannie mae it'll be even more expensive. Basically they're robbing future mortgage owners in order to pay current ones.

Worse yet, other towns with similar profiles might have their risk profile increased too, so they'll get extra premiums because of Richmond's behaviour without getting any of the benefits.

So while it might seem like they're just taking the money from pension funds and other investors, in the longer term they'll be taking far more from future mortgage owners.

If this system becomes routine, mortgage rates will go up, though I'm not sure about "huge premiums."

Is that a bad thing? The investment becomes risker and more expensive, so less money is available, so fewer mortgages are made. More people rent instead of buy their own homes. I would submit that fewer owner-occupied homes would be a positive thing for the national economy.

Fewer mortgages = lower property prices.

No mortgages = 10x lower property prices.

No mortgages = Detroit. The end result of this idea is not pretty.

> No mortgages = Detroit. The end result of this idea is not pretty.

The lack of mortgages did not cause the collapse of Detroit. The causation runs the other way.

The collapse of the auto industry led to the collapse of housing prices in Detroit, which in turn led to the collapse of the mortgage market. Who wants to issue mortgages for houses that are dropping in value?

> No mortgages = 10x lower property prices.

Without mortgages, housing would simply stabilize at the rental value. This will be lower than the current price -- but not anywhere close to 90% lower. The price floor would be the cost of new construction -- in other words, all the value in the structure, zero value in the land.

Instead of buying MBSes, investors who wished to have real estate exposure would simply supply capital to REITs that owned the properties directly. Banks would run these REITs for a fee, equivalent to the mortgage origination fee.

The equilibrium condition would not be objectively worse than the current equilibrium. You may have a subjective preference for an ownership society, but Germany does just fine with a rental society.

The problem is that it's socially costly to move from one equilibrium to another. If you go from the German model to the US model, then you hurt the renters. If you go from the US model to the German model, then you hurt the owners. You don't start out with a blank slate, so you cannot just pick an equilibrium.

If people can't get a mortgage on a property in this area, then house prices will fall. This effectively hurts all the people who have been paying their mortgages - which seems like an ineffective solution.

Richmond has decided to tear up a private contract to one side's advantage based on no pre-existing law. This is, generally, contrary to the principles of rule of law. The upside will be a short-term bump in Richmond's residents' balance sheets.

Courts are likely to strike this down. This will trash Richmond's public balance sheet. If courts allow this one would eventually expect private sector credit availability, to anyone in a low income neighbourhood, to dramatically re-price or freeze. It could also trigger a national housing credit, and price, pull-back.

Ironically either outcome will further impair Richmond property values, pushing more borrowers underwater and the city's tax income lower.

You're right. You know what would be easier? For all of Richmond to default on their mortgages.

Sidetrack: I put $50K into a townhouse in 2007 (my mistake!). I lost it all when the real estate market flopped. I walked away from the property because I wasn't willing to work for several years just to pay the principle down.

End result: No matter what, the real estate lost value. Either write it down now, or enjoy the pain as you write it off later (ie "extend and pretend": http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/megabanks-extend-and...).

What's that? Default judgement? Oh no. Bankruptcy. I still get to keep $1MM plus in retirement accounts, and I just can't buy another house for ~7 years. How horrible.

Couldn't agree more - default is the proper way to do this. Others include Richmond (a) buying underwater mortgages off investors and tearing them up or (b) making mortgage payments for its residents (an ersatz bail-out to investors).

Agree. But! You're going to need to find a way to untangle which investor owns which mortgage (these are derivatives after all). I'd say you get 90 days as an investor to respond; after that, the city gets to take unilateral action.

"But! You're going to need to find a way to untangle which investor owns which mortgage (these are derivatives after all)."

Mortgages are not derivatives, they are debts. Tracing the owner of a mortgage should not be challenging. In the event that it is, that becomes the mortgage servicer's fault, an issue between the investor and the servicer.

The US constitution says:

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

And since when Richmond is a state? You can read the constitution by spirit or by the letter. You cannot have both.

> And since when Richmond is a state? You can read the constitution by spirit or by the letter. You cannot have both.

There is no local sovereignty in the United States, except for whatever a state chooses to delegate to its municipalities. (This is why you hear about states that take over failing cities' schools and finances. The city possesses no sovereignty.)

All of Richmond's powers derive from the State of California. If California is prohibited from doing something, then so is Richmond.

Don't local governments simply operate as agents of the state they're in? I could be wrong about this, but I thought that they were simply organizational conveniences with no true independence, as contrasted with the states and the feds, here the states are independent entities bound by certain rules.

Wikipedia says:

> The Framers of the Constitution added this [no Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts] clause in response to the fear that states would continue a practice that had been widespread under the Articles of Confederation—that of granting "private relief." Legislatures would pass bills relieving particular persons (predictably, influential persons) of their obligation to pay their debts.

However it seems that in the Great Depression the Supreme Court held it to be okay for States to modify morgages under the "emergency exception doctrine" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Building_%26_Loan_Associat...

If a mortgage is underwater and the debtor cannot (or will not) pay, then it hardly matters to the investors whether the owner is foreclosed on, or the city forces principal reduction. Either way, the investor takes a loss. But seizing current underwater mortgages would be terribly shortsighted.

What intrigued me is the idea that investors would be willing to accept a principal reduction, but cannot because the logistics are too difficult. FTA:

Although it was in the banks' interest to write down the principal on loans to avoid an outright default... ...so many different investors would have to sign off on the change. Because of that, these "private label securitized" loans are much more likely to default than the banks' portfolio loans.

So maybe a deal could be crafted that is in the interests of both investors and homeowners. Home buyers might get the short end, with fewer foreclosed homes coming on the market, but I've heard that banks tend to sit on foreclosed properties for a long time anyways, so it may not affect the market supply much.

"If a mortgage is underwater and the debtor cannot (or will not) pay, then it hardly matters to the investors whether the owner is foreclosed on, or the city forces principal reduction. Either way, the investor takes a loss."

Mortgage markets are not terribly liquid. The "market value" the City of Richmond picks may not be favorable to the investor. The extra-contractual origin of this market-value-by-fiat makes it doubly uncomfortable.

Further, collateral can improve in value. The housing market is presently appreciating. A defaulting debtor's prospects are less certain.

The reporting is frankly terrible.

Let me put it in simple terms. An idea has been floating around for a while now that, in theory, you could use eminent domain to seize not just the houses, but the mortgages on the houses. Let's say that someone had borrowed $200k, but the house was now worth $100k. If you were a local government, you could seize the mortgage from the mortgage holder paying them compensation of, oh, $80k, tear it up, then the home owner gets a new mortgage for $90k, and gives you the proceeds, which would pay you back for the compensation you had to give the mortgage holder, and leave you with $10k to cover your overheads, fees, court costs, and maybe even leave something over for the group of highly altruistic bankers pushing this scheme.

This is normally where I would say "but there's just one problem", but that would be a lie, because there's at least three.

1) The constitution, post Kelo, is pretty lax about needing a good reason to deploy eminent domain, but it's still quite strict about the compensation needing to be fair (ie, the market value). The market value of a $200k mortgage for a $100k house is NOT $80k, or even $100k. Even if the mortgage is currently in default, it still represents ownership of a house worth $100k; by definition that makes it worth $100k, no $80k...and many mortgages won't default at all; even the ones who will eventually will be making payments in the meantime. So right off the bat, legal analysts are confident it's unconstitutional. (But the city can't offer the actual market value of the loan; they're broke.)

2) Banks are going to be very displeased. Except that's a lie; in the US banks don't actually make mortgages. The Federal government does (more than 90%, in point of fact), through the FHA. And they have already stated that they think this is the worst idea since forever, and they will take whatever steps necessary to shut it down, including just not making any more loans for houses in the region. Which in context is basically the nuclear option; the value of a house which can't get a mortgage is pretty much $0. The scheme absolutely relies on being able to get a new mortgage on the houses.

3) Just as if that wasn't enough, the IRS has a lot of very strict rules involving gifts. And buying someone's loan and tearing it up counts as a gift, and you have to pay tax on it. Quite a lot of tax, as it happens. And the homeowners in question don't have the cash, nor would they be thrilled at their massive tax bills even if they did. Which, again, kills the scheme.

4) It's also not entirely clear that this would be good policy even if it worked. This isn't the first attempt at trying to "fix" the problem of underwater mortgages, but results so far have been mixed at best. Then there's the broader policy implications of a bailout. Once you crunch through the likely results of the program, it's not exactly "take from the banks and give to the poor". The banks don't actually own mortgages, and the poor don't actually own houses. It actually ends up being "take from the pension funds and split the results between the middle class and some bankers". Makes for great soundbites, but it's not exactly Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest here. More like the Sheriff of Nottingham.

TL;DR: The plan is illegal, the federal government has already announced that they're putting a stop to it (and they hold all the cards in the mortgage market), it wouldn't work anyhow, and it's probably bad policy even if it did. It's been called a "scam", and frankly, that's pretty accurate.

Edit: From the article: "He's actually the guy responsible for it all: Steven Gluckstern, a former insurance executive who had teamed up with Vlahoplus to co-found Mortgage Resolution Partners, the firm that's lining up the capital -- from hedge funds, for instance -- to buy any mortgages that Richmond might seize. After that happens, Mortgage Resolution Partners would help the homeowner refinance through a Federal Housing Administration loan, and earns a $4,500 fee per successful transaction." Keep in mind that the FHA has said they won't make the loans. The scheme, at its core, is for some bankers to use hedge fund money to grab assets from pension funds, then refinance it using super-cheap loans from the FHA to turn a quick buck. But the FHA has stated it won't make the loans, so the scheme is D-E-A-D dead.

I don't think the plan will work either (for many of the reasons you've given), but I'm not as sure about this one:

The market value of a $200k mortgage for a $100k house is NOT $80k, or even $100k. Even if the mortgage is currently in default, it still represents ownership of a house worth $100k; by definition that makes it worth $100k, no $80k...

The market value of the mortgage is whatever it would actually sell for on the open market. I don't see a strong reason to believe it would always be equal to the price the underlying asset would sell for. Sometimes owning the mortgage is more valuable than the underlying property, because you've locked in a good interest rate and cash stream. Other times it's less valuable, because you have potential hassles over eviction, damage, etc., or because you've locked in a bad interest rate (the latter being the same reason bonds can be worth less than their face value).

In a situation like Richmond's housing market, with high default rates, it wouldn't be too surprising that an unencumbered property could sell for more than a mortgage on the same property would sell for. If I were buying, I would certainly demand a discount on the property to compensate for the risks of taking over the mortgage and a house with a resident in it, versus the situation of buying the property completely free and clear. That's not even specific to mortgages; any asset with a contract attached to it will be valued by taking into account the contract.

It's an interesting hypothetical, but presumably there is data about how much mortgages are worth along all these axes, since they are traded fairly heavily. We don't need to guess about it.

The challenge here is that the mortgage has a different valuing scheme than the property. The mortgage is valued against the rate of return and the risk of default. The property is valued against comparable properties.

The whole problem here is that you might have a $200K mortgage which is written to a very credit worthy borrower who is paying on time, against a house with a market value of $100K (probably not in the Bay Area but this is just an example).

So the fair market value of a $200K mortgage, that matures in 2033 might be $100k (this is essentially a zero coupon bond at this point and we're assuming a 3.5% rate of return) could be "destroyed" (which is to say seized by eminent domain) and replaced with a $100K mortgage that matures in 2043 (assuming a 30 yr mortgage). That is worth something like $35,000 (again assuming an annual rate of 3.5%) which quite a bit less than $100K,

So looking at it as an investor you've had $100K worth of "principal" stolen from your retirement account by the City of Richmond, and sold to someone else for basically 1/3 the price, because the underlying basis for this particular investment vehicle was someones home, which is now underwater value wise.

The saddest part of the mortgage mess is that it is so freakishly complicated to figure out what or who owns a mortgage in the world of derivatives. If Richmond is successful (and I hope they are) the next story will be people who have this sudden drop in their 401k investment value with a note "Funds taken by City of Richmond" ) and those folks are going to go "WTF?" and the next round of scare stories will be "Richmond just yanked nearly a billion dollars out of people 401k funds and gave them to a Hedge fund, could you be next?" And nobody will be calling for the real reform which is some level of regulation on what you can and cannot do with a home mortgage security.

> The market value of the mortgage is whatever it would actually sell for on the open market.

Yes. But as a practical matter, the market value of an underwater but performing loan is going to be significantly higher than the underlying asset, and most of the loans in the pool Richmond is looking at are performing.

A defaulted loan might be worth nothing more than the underlying asset less foreclosure costs (which can, as you note, be high); in some cases that might work out to be around 80% of the house value (which is what Richmond plans to offer), so in a small minority of cases Richmond's plan may pass constitutional muster. Unfortunately, their plan then relies on turning around and having the same home buyer get a new mortgage. I'll give you three guesses as to how easily a guy who just defaulted on his last mortgage will get a new one on the same house...

In short, yes, valuing mortgages is complicated. But they are liquid, traded investments, and the market price is simply higher than Richmond is offering on average. And the minority where it isn't won't work on its own.

> buying someone's loan and tearing it up counts as a gift

Through 2013 forgiveness of the mortgage on the debtor's principal residence is not taxable. If the law is not extended, there will spring up an industry to do wash sales of property so that the capital loss can be taken at the same time as the forgiveness.

The far market value of a house is not the sales price or the appeased value. You need to subtract transaction costs. For your average bank trying to do a quick sale they might get ~80% or less of the appraised value depending on a host of factors which is why 20% down payments are considered so important. As to mortgages if you look at the mortgage resale market you again need to subtract servicing costs which significantly impact actual value.

> Which in context is basically the nuclear option; the value of a house which can't get a mortgage is pretty much $0.

Wouldn't that mean that the cash-up-front price of the homes would go down until they became affordable? I'd like to buy a $0 house.

Worth less than it costs to build is a more appropriate way of phrasing it. Houses in Richmond are substitutable, to some extent, by buying where mortgages are available. So the depth of the house "order book" in Richmond would be very shallow. It wouldn't be $0, but it would be a lot less than in places you can get a mortgage.

Whups. I misspoke; it will wreck the housing market and stop new building, but it will not drop the price of existing houses to $0. :)

Hi, thank you for your insightful comment. Can you provide a source for the sentence "The Federal government does (more than 90%, in point of fact), through the FHA."? I am unable to find any similar statistics. Thanks.

I don't have a link to hard data, but it's a widely reported fact.

> An estimated 90% of all mortgage issuance is government-related (either Fan/Fred or Ginnie). The government now bears 50% of the credit risk of the entire mortgage market. For all intents and purposes, the U.S. mortgage market is more or less nationalized.

(Source: http://marketrealist.com/2013/08/role-fannie-mae-freddie-mac...)

> Currently, the government backs about 90 percent of newly issued mortgages, more than ever before. The proportion fell in the years leading up to 2007 as subprime loans proliferated and then soared after that market collapsed. Since then, the Federal Housing Administration has expanded its role in backing home loans on the low end of the scale.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/business/report-lays-out-p...)

> After all, more than 90% of all loan activity is underwritten, insured, or owned by the government and its affiliated entities.

(Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/morganbrennan/2013/10/01/heres-h...)

And from 2010:

> Government-related entities backed 96.5% of all home loans during the first quarter, up from 90% in 2009, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

(Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870409320457521...)

Any way you slice it, the government has a HUGE role in mortgage issuance in the US. And they have said:

> The federal housing agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, on Thursday made clear it doesn't intend to let this happen. The agency said it would instruct Fannie and Freddie to 'limit, restrict or cease business activities' in any jurisdiction using eminent domain to seize mortgages.

(Source: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/08/business/la-fi-emine...)

Good luck to anyone ever getting a mortgage in that town ever again.

Moreover, the property values there will go even lower because of dried up financing.

This could become a textbook case of government power abuse backfiring at the people the politicians claim to be "helping"

There is a better description of what this city did: Theft

That's one way to look at it. Another way is that they're fully bursting the real estate bubble that the entire nation's financial systems have furiously been forcing compressed air into for the last 5 years in the name of "preserving home values" even though normal people can't actually afford a home anymore.

While I agree with railing about bad decisions, it is almost willfully ignorant to continue to argue against settled law. This is as much theft as it was in Connecticut.

As much as I hate it, "Wickard vs Fillburn", and "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission", "Gonzales v. Raich", and lastly "Kelo v. City of New London" ARE the laws of the land.

If the investment classes are going to be leveraging laws against homeowner to take property at 'current market prices'; how is it wrong for cities to force investor classes to do the same?

Change the laws, but don't decry the victims of fraud and systemic false market inflation turning the current laws against those who perpetuated the pump and dump scheme on them in the first place.

I think it will cost some financing issues/property costs, but then it will lead to the rise of a Community Trust bank or Credit Union. These are things that truly change communities.

Maybe.

But keep in mind that the world's best-regarded borrower is the German federal government, which has defaulted twice in the past century. Past returns do not predict future performance, as the prospectuses say.

Or maybe lending standards will increase (ie, you won't be able to get a loan unless you can prove you are going to be able to pay it off), and valuations will be more conservative.

Neither are exactly a bad thing.

I think big banks will actually avoid the municipality like a plague for several years. But a community bank will rise and the locals will laugh.

If you were foreclosed on over a year ago, and were able to prove it was due to economic hardship, you can get an FHA loan.

Disclaimer: Both my parents work in the mortgage underwriting business, one of them forcing BoA/Chase/Wells to take back th loans they made during the boom times.

EDIT: I'm a sport, here's a citation: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/09/wsj-fha-cuts-waiti...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732398060457903...

They said the same thing about Iceland too :).

I think this is the real and telling part. Yes, they had to give up a 34mm bond sale because the top level bond market was refusing to buy. This is a short term problem caused by butt hurt bankers, not actual investor class bond buyers. The city is not actually defaulting on any real bonds, the bond investor class is not being hurt.

Yes it will cost more for 10 years until they can re-finance; but when the city offers a margin over market, actual people bond buyers will jump for the chance to make a % over market.

If no one can get a mortgage there then house prices go to their cash only value, so one wouldn't need a mortgage to buy. So the good luck should go to anyone wishing to sell a house there

You want to bet there isn't a credit union in the entire city? That entire category had much fewer problems because they didn't write bad-to-fraudulent loans during the derivative party era and the recurring theme throughout this story is that Richmond has been unable to otherwise motivate the big banks to do their jobs – something which would not be true for a local/regional bank which wasn't grossly irresponsible.

Hacker News cognitive dissonance week:

  1) Creating technical arguments against court-ordered search warrants: heroic civil disobedience.
  2) Creating technical workarounds for mortgage debt paralysis: craven violation of sacred property rights.

Not really. Both 1 and 2 are reactions to government over reach.

Can you elaborate as to exactly why a person who does not have the same opinion on both 1 and 2 must be suffering from "cognitive dissonance"? I don't see much of a relation between them.

Because he's still offended by the massive downvotes on his illogical comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6485956

Oh no, my precious internet points!

Yes, because I personally give a shit about your stupid downvotes. I am devastated.

The reporting of the so-called "Wonkblog"'s reporting is particularly un-wonkish, describing the plan as 'complex' and talking about it in one of those artificial newspaper pseudo-neutral points of view, affecting to be balanced while dropping loaded language like such as

A courtroom victory for Richmond, a town of about 100,000, could give cities around the country the courage to act -- and potentially help keep millions of people in their homes.

The plan doesn't target distressed mortgages, so it's not just a problem of loaded language designed to appeal to certain kinds of readers--it's also a bald lie. As for the other side:

But even a win could spell defeat for Richmond if the financial industry cuts off lending to make an example of the city.

Make an example of the city. Hmm. It's not that private industry is not obligated to do money-losing business with eminent domain thieves, it's that they want to make an example of people who cross them. Well, you can see what the writer actually believes, or at least what he pretends to believe in order to appeal to readers.

The plan is not 'complex' but fairly straightforward and very obviously illegal and not in the best interests of the public. I'm not aware of any informed opinion to the effect that this is a good idea. I discussed this in an earlier post(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6273836), which I think is worth reposting, because as far as I can tell little has changed since then.

Repost below:

====

The blog Naked Capitalism--hardly a friend of big finance--points out that this is a scam here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/beware-of-private-equ....

Some key points:

* The profits are being split among Richmond and a private investment firm named "Mortgage Resolution Partners, LLC".

* Seizing a mortgage for less than its fair market value is blatantly unconstitutional. The argument that the value of an underwater mortgage in repayment is worth less than the house is so obviously wrong, I have a hard time believing Richmond officials honestly buy it. A mortgage that is on track to be repaid is undoubtedly worth close to the future value of repayment, even if the house is worth $0.

* Big banks do not actually own most mortgages in general. So this is not a scheme to rob big banks, although Mortgage Resolution Partners, LLC certainly wants to spin it that way.

* Almost all housing mortgages are merely serviced by banks but owned predominantly by entites such as "state and local governments, hospitals, Fannie, Freddie, and to a lesser degree, foundations and endowments". The banks have a legal obligation to protect these mortgages, of course.

* Many of these loans are current--they're not distressed mortgages at all! They also plan to steer clear of houses with liens. Naked Capitalism comments that the plan only works financially if they go after the mortgages of those that need help the least.

In short, this is a transfer of wealth from a diverse array of investors to the city of Richmond and a bunch of investment banker types--theft under the cover of populist outrage. It would also severely damage the market for future homeowners in Richmond, anyone who wants to sell their home, anyone who wants to refinance... Oh, it's also a threat to fundemental notions of private property, rule of law, and market capitalism, but distressingly few people still care about that. The bit I want to emphasize is that it's Prince John pretending to be Robin Hood.

Factually you are absolutely correct. But bad outcomes like this are the result of bad decisions by the Supreme Court. We all have to live in a land run by "Kelo v. City of New London"

Maybe this can help get the laws under that decision changed.

The eminent domain plan simply lies about the value of a mortgage, saying it's worth less than not only best accounting practice but the market value required for their plan to work. Kelo doesn't apply because using a clearly unfair valuation in eminent domain is directly against the Constitution.

I don't disagree, but the definition of "clearly unfair" floats on the whims of Justice Kennedy.

indeed.

Only a small fraction of constitutional disputes end in a 5-4 decision, and the ideological divides in those opinions are narrower than op-ed writers would have you believe.

The fair market value of a $200k mortgage will not be $200k, I think they could get the "fair market value" in there at one point.

You seem to know a lot more about this situation than I do though, and from your other points it does seem fishy.

While I am pretty sympathetic to the anti-TPP cause, the video is awful. It started off with ridiculous scaremongering about "frankenfoods", ie GMO foods, which have the potential for incredible benefits for mankind. It even specifically calls out food grown in a lab - do these people not realise the environmental damage we could prevent if we could grow meat? The nutritional benefits? The cruelty averted?

And that's the very first thing they said! I couldn't tell you the second thing, because I closed the video.

What is it about these activist organisations that compel them to so consistently throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Thats a different story!

It's not necessarily a fraud. The key is it only works in cases where the fair market value of the house is below the value of the mortgage. In that case, the city only has to pay the FMV. Now, there is always going to be some question about what is actually the FMV of a property. But this is true regardless of whether the city is in cahoots with a property developer who wants to put up some expensive shopping mall where single family homes once stood, or in this case where Richmond is proposing to seize by eminent domain houses which are underwater.

Why are the banks against this? (1) they believe they could get more at auction than the FMV determined by the eminent domain process, and (2) the seizure happens at a time outside of their control, where as the bank might be holding off on the foreclosure process since if they were to actually foreclose on the property, and discover from the auction that they could recover significantly less than the mortgage, they would then realize a loss which would screw up their capital holdings.

Either way, as far as the homeowners are concerned, they are effectively going to be foreclosed against. The only difference is that they will be offered a chance to continue to live in the house, and pay rent (which might or might not be at FMV; it's not clear from the description). Maybe it might be a rent with an option to buy, but basically the main goal of the city is to preserve the neighborhood instead of letting speculators buy the house at foreclosure.

So I wouldn't necessarily call it a scam. Will the banks lose out? Probably. But I don't know that they would necessarily lose out that badly --- that is, unless you don't believe that people who lose their houses due to eminent domain when a city is enriching some real estate developer isn't paying FMV to people who are turned out of their homes to build a shopping mall or a new stadium....

It's the money of other citizens. People don't realize it but money doesn't always gets invested from wealthy individuals. It could very well be from pension funds, mutual funds etc. So it's not that banks are getting hurt but other normal citizens. Also, stop painting banks as evil.

It's the money of other citizens. People don't realize it but money doesn't always gets invested from wealthy individuals. It could very well be from pension funds, mutual funds etc.

Pension & mutual funds are big enough to force banks to act differently, and haven't. They should bear the risks associated with that behaviour.

stop painting banks as evil

Why? Their behaviour in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis was unethical (to say the least), and their behaviour after 2008 has shown a complete lack of regret.

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