The Mortgage Mess: What Could A Solution Look Like?

Friday’s mortgage ruling in Massachusetts confirmed what many have been reporting for some time, the mortgage mess is huge, getting hotter, and not going away. This is just the message we heard at our December 21st event, “Cleaning up the Mortgage Mess: Problems and Solutions.”

Thanks to Friday’s ruling, there are thousands of foreclosures in Massachusetts that will likely need to be revisited, and the question on everyone’s mind is how are our systems going to handle this? The Massachusetts ruling is really a confirmation that the systems we’ve used to process foreclosures thus far are broken and overwhelmed. One of the highlights of the event on the 21st was Julia Gordon, Senior Policy Counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, presenting the need for a better triage system within the foreclosure servicing process to identify situations that would be better addressed through alternative means.

Reid Cramer sat down with Julia after the event for one of a series of short conversations about the mortgage mess, this one focuses on that triage system, the role of bankruptcy court in ameliorating the mess, and the state and federal policy levers in play to improve the situation for homeowners, the lenders, and the economy at large, take a look: