Posts Tagged ‘cash-out refinancing’
Chicago Hearts Texas
Mary Umberger at the Chicago Tribune has written a kind and thoughtful article about my Texas prescription for avoiding future foreclosures: limit cash-out refinancing to 80 percent of a home’s value.
Expert/friends I’ve been talking to since my article ran in The Big Money/Slate/Washington Post note that constitutionally any legislation directly restricting cash-outs, Texas-style, would have to take place at the state level. So how about it, Illinois? Sure, it’ll be a tough sell politically, especially once the lobbyists and donors descend. I can already hear the cry: The politicians are stealing Americans’ freedom [to destroy their family finances]!
But as Umberger notes the real estate biz is more split on cash-outs than you might imagine. The Texas Realtors, for one, have vigorously defended the state’s cash-out limits. After all, they want selling a home to be the readiest way to tap home equity.
Don’t Mess With Texas
New from me in The Big Money: How Texas escaped the mortgage bust. A big part of the answer is that Texas tightly restricts refinancing, so homeowners can’t use their real estate as ATMs. They take this seriously in Texas – it’s in the state constitution. If the rest of the country had rules like Texas’, we’d be a whole lot safer from the threat of predatory lending, debt slavery and real estate bubbles.
How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.
The Latest
Organizations that matter
- Affordable Housing Centers of America
- Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
- Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program
- Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
- Center for Responsible Lending
- Demos
- Drum Major Institute
- Joint Center for Housing Studies
- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
- National Consumer Law Center
- National Housing Institute
- National Housing Trust
- National Low Income Housing Coalition
- National Training and Information Center
- Natn’l Community Reinvestment Coalition
- NEDAP
- New America Foundation
- PolicyLink
- Pratt Center for Community Development
- Revson Fellowship
- Smart Growth America
What Alyssa reads
- Baseline Scenario
- Ben Smith
- Bloomberg News
- Calculated Risk
- City Limits
- Consumer Law and Policy Blog
- Doug Henwood
- Felix Salmon
- Galleycat
- Housing Wire
- Mother Jones
- Next American City
- Paul Krugman
- PolicyCents
- Ryan Avent
- Shelterforce
- Street Level
- Talking Points Memo
- The Audit
- The Balance Sheet
- The Big Picture
Tags
American Prospect Ameriquest Andrew Cuomo Atlanta Barney Frank Bloomberg News Bloomsbury Bush Business Week California Clinton Community Reinvestment Act Consumer Financial Protection Agency Dean Baker Elizabeth Warren Fannie Mae Felix Salmon FHA financial stability foreclosures Freddie Mac Gretchen Morgenson Home Mortgage Disclosure Act homeownership Larry Summers loan modifications media mortgage-backed securities Mortgage Bankers Association mortgage brokers mortgage fraud mortgage suicides New York Times Obama Paul Krugman publishing Rick Santelli Salon securitization subprime tenants Texas The Big Money Timothy Geithner Wall Street Journal