Customer Reviews

Foreclosed: High-Risk Lending, Deregulation, and the Undermining of America's Mortgage Market

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This book confirms what most people within the housing industry already knew, that Dan Immergluck is perhaps the preeminent authority on all things related to the most recent crises currently plaguing the housing industry. The author lends a lot of credibility on the subject matter, given that he has been researching the effects of foreclosed properties for several years now and is not simply an example of the researcher who latches on to the most recent "flavor of the day". Given that the current foreclosure tsunami within the U.S. is nearing the three year mark, I would encourage all potential readers to make room within your summer reading list for this book.

As is typical with much of his earlier work on credit and the lending industry, Dan Immergluck takes a forensic approach of examining how we have gotten to where we are today. As a result, the reader is treated to a thorough historical examination of the banking system and all of those responsible for overseeing its development over the past few decades. Despite his notable dispassionate and evenhanded approach to presenting the material within the book, Immergluck's reporting will surely leave you outraged as to government's and industry's culpability in allowing unprepared first-time homeowners to enter such a vulnerable financial situation. For all those who feel that foreclosure is something that affects "the other guy", Immergluck's book serves as a sobering reminder that the foreclosure down the street has potentially far-reaching implications for even those who are responsible in their homeownership and mortgage situation. This fact alone should cause you to be concerned enough to read this book, for despite its disturbing message on the state of the current American housing market you cannot help but read further.

Andy Carswell, Ph.D.
Department of Housing & Consumer Economics
University of Georgia

Many things in life are so complex that they are never understood, or the very process of explaining them leaves us even more confused. The recent crisis in the residential mortgage market is a leading example of this. An individual residential mortgage can have features that most persons never understand (graduated payment adjustable rate mortgages with negative amortization??). When the layers of the seconday mortgage market with multiple tranches and derivatives are added, and then over 100 different forms of foreclosure laws are used, it is no wonder that most simply shake their heads and give up.
Dan Immergluck's "Foreclosed" is one of the most brilliant and powerful descriptions of the mortgage market to appear. It takes the entire mortgage industry and makes it clear and simple, without making it simplistic. If the industry, and the federal regulators, could have read this book we would not be facing the crisis of today.

Frank S. Alexander
Professor of Law
Emory University School of Law

The foreclosure crisis is complex and often confusing -- what with no docs, low docs, credit default swaps, GSE's, subprime loans, predatory loans, CMOs, tranches, etc., etc., etc. If you really want to understand the foreclosure issue, Immegluck's book is the best source. It is demanding material but he writes clearly and to-the-point, explaining all of the processes in simple English. Immegluck understands the mortgage business from the grassroots and from the heights of the global economic system. His explanation of "leveraging" -- why the relatively small American mortgage crisis played havoc with the international economy -- is alone worth the price of admission.

Immergluck has a point of view but it is not simplistic. He advocates a sound regulatory structure but not governmental allocation of credit. Neither a free marketer not a socialist, Immergluck writes out of the rich critical tradition of American progressivism. I wish all of the people who are making housing policy had read Immegluck's book. It is real contribution to clarifying the public debate about this difficult issue. Buy it and read it.

If you are going to read a book on the mortgage/foreclosure crisis - this is the one to start with - and perhaps end with.

There are already quite a few books out addressing -- either directly or indirectly -- the mortgage and financial crises and their origin in the subprime mortgage debacle. Many of them are superficial and some are simply filled with bad information. At the same time, although the book is from an academic press (Cornell) and so subject to correspondingly higher standards than most books hitting the shelves, it is highly readable.

None of the other books I have seen on this topic are as well researched, and as fundamentally sound, as Immergluck's Foreclosed. If you want to REALLY understand the mortgage mess, this is the book to read.

"Foreclosed" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Immergluck's book interview ran here as cover feature on June 24, 2009.