Programs & Events
Transforming Foreclosed Properties into Community Assets
Date: Friday, May 2nd 2008
On May 2, 2008, the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, with support from the Ford Foundation, convened leading housing researchers, policymakers, lenders, and nonprofit housing organizations to discuss how to best leverage public and private resources to reuse foreclosed properties in a manner that helps stabilize neighborhoods. In particular, the roundtable addressed the following critical questions:
- What are the problems with the existing market for foreclosed properties? What are the costs of the current system to defaulting borrowers, lenders, neighborhoods, and municipalities?
- At what points during the process of mortgage distress and foreclosure will interventions be most successful in ensuring that properties are transferred to owner-occupants?
- What are the challenges and opportunities presented by existing models for non-profit developers or city agencies to acquire rehabilitate and resell foreclosed properties to qualified homebuyers?
- What are the challenges and opportunities presented by existing models for non-profit developers to acquire, rehabilitate, and manage foreclosed properties as affordable rental housing?
- What are the legislative and regulatory obstacles to the productive reuse of foreclosed properties?
- How can researchers and key stakeholders work together to identify neighborhoods and properties to be targeted for disposition programs, measure successes, and incorporate rigorous evaluation components into new programs?
A list of the participants biographies can be found here.
Session 1: Framing the Problem: The Market for Foreclosed Properties
A presentation by Paul Willen of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, commissioned for the roundtable, and the subsequent panel discussion described existing research on the market for foreclosed properties and highlight areas in which further research needs to be focused.
Discussants:
Oren Bar-Gill, NYU School of Law (Moderator)
Claudia Coulton, Case Western Reserve University (view presentation)
Stephen Janes, Baltimore Housing
Laurie Maggiano, HUD Office of Single Family Asset Management
Mark Willis, JP Morgan Chase
Session 2: Framing the Solutions: Opportunities for Intervention
A presentation by Frank Alexander of Emory Law School, commissioned for the roundtable, and the subsequent panel discussion described the various points during the foreclosure process at which city agencies or non-profit organizations may be able to intervene to ensure the productive reuse of mortgage distressed properties, the legal and administrative obstacles to such intervention, and how these intervention points vary according to local foreclosure laws and processes.
Discussants:
Mary Burkholder, LISC
Sarah Greenberg, NeighborWorks America
Michael Meyer, City of Newark
David Reiss, Brooklyn Law School (Moderator)
Session 3: Partnering with Lenders to Reuse Distressed Properties
A presentation by Tom Deutsch of the American Securitization Forum, commissioned for the roundtable, and the subsequent panel discussion addressed the structural and legal issues securitization presents to property reuse strategies and explore how government and non-profit agencies can work with lenders and servicers to encourage them to engage in short sales and discounted sales of REO property or otherwise play an active role in efforts to ensure the productive reuse of distressed properties.
Discussants:
Ingrid Beckles, Freddie Mac
Heidi Coppola, Citibank
Jim Rokakis, Cuyahoga County Treasurer
John Taylor, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
Mary Tingerthal, Housing Partnership Network (Moderator)
Lunch Talk: Historical Models: Lessons from the Past
Ellen Seidman of ShoreBank Corporation discussed lessons learned from prior models of large scale disposition of distressed properties, including the asset disposition activities of the Home Owners Loan Corporation and Resolution Trust Corporation and HUD’s Asset Control Area (ACA) program.
Session 4: Existing and Emerging Models for Reusing Distressed Properties
Presentations by a panel of governmental and non-profit practitioners will described existing or emerging programs designed to intervene in the foreclosure process to ensure the productive reuse of distressed properties. Presenters described the legal and administrative obstacles they face, methods of evaluating the program’s results and whether the program’s design is tied to a particular type of housing market.
Presenters/discussants:
Jim Bliesner, San Diego City-County Reinvestment Task Force (view presentation)
Rafael Cestero, Enterprise Community Partners (Moderator)
Bruce Gottschall, NHS Chicago (view presentation)
Daniel Kildee, Genesee County Land Bank (view presentation)
Amy Klaben, Columbus Housing Partnership (view presentation)
Session 5: Next Steps: Setting a Legislative and Research Agenda
A presentation by Janneke Ratcliffe of the Center for Community Capital, commissioned for the roundtable, and the subsequent panel discussion set forth an agenda for designing workable methods of evaluating the outcomes of property acquisition and disposition schemes.
In addition, the panel discussed how state and federal legislative proposals to address the subprime mortgage crisis could be strengthened to address the need for timely and productive reuse of foreclosed properties.
Discussants:
David Abromowitz, Center for American Progress
Bill Apgar, Joint Center for Housing Studies
Vicki Been, NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy (Moderator)
Patricia McCoy, University of Connecticut School of Law
Ali Solis, Enterprise Community Partners
Susan Wachter, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
