NCST’s Policy Team engages regularly with other community development, housing, and consumer organizations as well as with lenders, servicers, and trade associations. This page provides links to noteworthy publications, white papers and other external resources relevant to the work we do.
- Small-Dollar Mortgages for Single-Family Residential Properties, issued April 25, 2018 by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. This report examines the availability of small-dollar mortgages (up to $70,000) for home purchases, refinances, and improvements, presenting a wealth of information on borrower and loan characteristics, production channels, and the geographic distribution of low-cost homes, and offers a useful compendium of data that has not been pulled together before in this format. Authors – Alanna McCargo, Bing Bai, Taz George, and Sarah Strochak
- What Fueled the Financial Crisis? This Urban Institute paper, issued on April 4, 2018, is their recent exploration of default and loss behaviors of purchase, rate refinance and cash out refinance loans. Their data shows that cash out refinances have performed most poorly, especially during the financial crisis. Among other things, the report provides additional evidence that lending to LMI homebuyers was likely not the main reason for the mortgage defaults that led to the financial crisis. Rather, it was the industry’s focus on pushing refinancing, and especially cash out refinancing. Authors – Laurie Goodman and Jun Zhu
- Home Values Remain Low in Vast Majority of Formerly Redlined Neighborhoods. This Zillow Research report, published April 25, 2018, shows that values in the vast majority of neighborhoods that were “redlined” by the federal government 80 years ago are lower now than in areas rated more highly. While those of us who work in these neighborhoods are well aware that redlining’s legacy is still with us, this mapping project provides the hard evidence of its persistence. Author – Sarah Mikhitarian
- Community Reinvestment Act – Findings and Recommendations. The U.S. Department of the Treasury released recommendations to modernize the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) on April 3, 2018. The recommendations were issued to the primary CRA regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In response to this report, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition issued an analysis that provides insight into the various recommendations, some of which are positive and others of which may pose risks to our work in communities.