Our Publications

Does a Nonprofit “First Look” Program Promote Neighborhood Stabilization? Examining Outcomes for REO Sales in Florida (September 2021)

Excerpted from Tackling Vacancy and Abandonment: Strategies and Impacts after the Great Recession, a publication from the Center for Community Progress and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Cleveland. This research was produced by David Sanchez, NCST Director of Research & Development, and Andrew Jakabovics, VP of Policy Development at Enterprise Community Partners and NCST Board Chair.

During the COVID-19 crisis, minority neighborhoods have been those most affected by an increase in foreclosures. Black and Hispanic households struggled the most to make mortgage payments and rent. To promote wealth accumulation among minorities, first look programs should be considered as a key strategy to close the racial wealth gap.

NCST’s research examines the effect of NCST’s REOMatch First Look program. REOMatch offers mission-driven housing developers the first opportunity to acquire real-estate-owned (REO) properties that were acquired by financial institutions due to mortgage default to stabilize neighborhoods. The paper tests whether NCST Community Partners facilitated homeownership more often than typical real estate investors in Florida from 2014 to 2017. The research finds that, compared to other purchasers of distressed properties, NCST Community Partners are more likely to renovate properties in lower-income minority neighborhoods and sell these properties to owner-occupants. As a result, REOMatch was especially effective in facilitating homeownership in minority neighborhoods — indicating that first look programs remain an important strategy to promote homeownership and neighborhood stabilization in the wake of economic fallouts.

Read “Does a Nonprofit ‘First Look’ Program Promote Neighborhood Stabilization? Examining Outcomes for REO Sales in Florida”

Protecting Homeownership from the Impact of COVID-19 (May 2021)

Published by the National Community Stabilization Trust and National Fair Housing Alliance with support from the National Association of REALTORS®

During and after the Great Recession, almost eight million homeowners nationwide lost their homes to foreclosure. While vacant and abandoned homes blighted many neighborhoods throughout the country, tight access to credit locked many prospective owner-occupants out of the market. As a result, foreclosed properties were overwhelmingly sold to investors, and ultimately more than five million homes transitioned from owner-occupied to investor-owned rental homes. These trends were even more concentrated in communities of color, sending the homeownership rates for both African Americans and Latino Americans tumbling.

Today, we face a different housing crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on Americans’ health, well-being, and employment. In this new research, the authors identify best practices learned from the Great Recession to blunt the pandemic’s impact on homeownership.

Read “Protecting Homeownership from the Impact of COVID-19”

Community Restoration Corporation Report (October 2019)

This report explores the implementation, outcomes, and lessons learned from the Community Restoration Corporation’s acquisition and management of a Non-Performing Loan portfolio over the course of several years.

Overview: Despite an overall housing recovery, many communities are still held back by high numbers of vacant and abandoned homes. Increasingly, states are experimenting with expedited foreclosure processes for these properties to prevent blight – but are those laws producing results. This report finds that the expedited foreclosure laws in four states – Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio – appear to have produced minimal results. Rather, these legislative efforts are more useful as policy vehicles for other changes to foreclosure laws.

NCST CRC Report_2019

Fast Track Foreclosure Laws: Not a Silver Bullet for Fighting Blight (August 2018)

Since the 2008 foreclosure crisis, some stakeholders have strongly promoted state foreclosure laws to accelerate the foreclosure process specifically for vacant residential properties as one such strategy. We decided to study these legislative efforts to see if they were moving the needle in a positive direction.

In short, our research found no evidence to support the idea that “fast track” processes have helped to move the dial, either by expediting foreclosures or by resolving vacancy more quickly, or have hurt consumers by being inappropriately used to oust families from occupied properties.

Read “Fast Track Foreclosure Laws: Not a Silver Bullet for Fighting Blight” by Robert Finn and Julia Gordon

Our 2009-2013 Five-Year Update

NCST made great strides in our first five years to help local housing providers, local government, and financial institutions implement strategic, sustainable programs to stabilize neighborhoods. We invite you to learn more.

View the .pdf version of the Five-Year Update.

Policy Corner

Each month in our Community Update e-newsletter, we publish a Policy Corner column written by Julia Gordon or a policy associate. You will find these columns on our Policy Blog.

Community Update

Each month we publish an e-newsletter – “Community Update” – to share interesting perspectives, news, events, property success stories and more with our community, those invested in restoring affordable neighborhoods. We also release periodic Quick Updates pertaining to our industry or operations.

Fact Sheets

Download our .pdf Fact Sheets for information on our work and programs.