STUDIES, PRESENTATIONS AND COMMENTS

Note: this page lists published own work of the past 20 years, which covers a range of countries worldwide. There is additional unpublished consulting work of ca the same volume on more countries. For a comprehensive published resource base in housing finance, to which we sector specialists all contribute, please visit the website of my colleague Professor Marja Hoek-Smit at the Wharton School, Hofinet.

November 2015: Presentation held at the 3rd International Housing Finance Conference in Seoul/Korea on European mortgage consumer protection. I was asked to do a section on mortgage debt restructuring. In terms of principal reduction, the recent Hungarian case, which now Poland, Croatia and Cyprus try to mimick, excels. I am preparing a paper on the subject to be finished ca April 2016.

September 2014: NBP workshop Recent trends in the real estate market and its analysis, 2013 Papers submitted for publication are now published in the Narodowy Bank Polski Working Paper Series and will be indexed on IDEAS REPEC and SSRN.

August 2014 Contribution of a chapter to The Global Financial Crisis and Housing on Transatlantic Mortgage Boom and Bust. The book has been carefully edited by Susan Wachter, Man Cho and Moon Joong Tcha. Korean Development Institution Series in Policy and Development, Edward Elgar.

July 2014 Publication of a Finpolconsult study on mortgage prepayment indemnities in Europe (Vorfaelligkeitsentschaedigungen in Europa) as a follow-up on the implementation challenges of the EU CARRP Directive. The study has a broader discussion of the mortgage product menu and its stability implications as well as German mortgage market issues (in German, Anschreiben). German speakers might be interested in the survey on prepayment indemnities in Germany undertaken by the vzbv consumer group, of course always bearing in mind that it is a lobby group pushing its case (just like the banks). Die Welt has press coverage of my study and a piece produced by IW on the subject.  For english studies and material on the subject and European mortgage finance in general see the housing finance page on this website.

March 2014: publication of a study on Central/Eastern European mortgage and covered bond markets (Realkredit- und Pfandbriefmaerkte in Mittel- und Osteuropa) financed in 2012 by a German covered bond software provider (German). The study benefited from the earlier EBRD study available for download below. Covers also commercial real estate markets and additional countries.

February 2014 Paper for the National Bank of Poland on mortgage finance regulation in CEE summarizes my 2012 EBRD study.

June 2013: those of you who are interested in Spanish mortgage finance and the subsequent banking crisis may be interested in my ad-hoc presentation given at this years International Housing Finance Course at the Wharton School. I will try to do more in-depth work on the Spanish crisis, the problem as usual is politics pre-empting access to public funding.

November 2012: Presentation given at the SUERF Conference in Copenhagen on the transatlantic mortgage crisis.

October 2012: EBRD-funded study on Mortgage Regulation in Central and Eastern Europe with an empirical focus on Hungary, Romania, Croatia and Serbia. Here is the presentation held at a seminar in Budapest mid-October.

June 2012: Short Zerohedge post on some of the issues facing investors regarding the construction of the Spanish covered bond law. See also my earlier paper on the German Pfandbrief system (in Deutsch).

June 2012: Presentation given at IMFs MCM Department on Housing Finance Specialists - Reform or Unwind, as we are faced with dozens of dysfunctional housing finance systems in the overdeveloped world.

April 2012: Short article looking into German house price risk, potential mortgage default drivers and their joint financial determinants, written on behalf of Genopace (B2B platform). There are obviously mitigants, such as Germany's high rental sector share. Problematic however is the impact of low rates on house prices, and in combination with long-term fixing of those rates the high duration gap taken by German banks and accepted by bank regulators (Deutsch).

FT Alphaville post on below paper highlighting the challenge for central banks, courtesy Tracy Alloway.

September 2011: Comment on the U.S. interagency conflict that broke the monetary policy transmission channel for mortgages. Essentially, until the summer of 2011 Federal Reserve zero interest rate policies, sponsored by savers, have recapitalized the former Government-sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as U.S. banks holding mortgage bonds, rather than benefiting U.S. consumers. By the fall of 2001 a consensus seems to be emerging that - even as consumer debt levels remain way too high - at least lower policy rates should be passed  through directly to consumers, allowing for indirect positive feedback effects on the industry.

June 2011: Paper for CEPS Brussels regarding a new European Retail Mortgage Credit regime in consumer protection. The paper takes a transatlantic perspective of the retail mortgage sector crisis we are currently facing, an approach which was not possible to take under the EU DG Markt study below. The launch of the paper was on June 23 at CEPS, with EU parlamentarians Antolin Sanchez-Presedo (Spain), Vicky Ford (United Kingdom) and Sven Giegold (Germany) present and commenting. My brief presentation during the event is here.

March 2011: EU DG Markt launch of the Study on the Costs and Benefits of Different Policy Options for Mortgage Credit, co-authored by Finpolconsult/Achim Dübel with London Economics. The study already had been submitted by the authors in Fall 2009. DG Markt decided to publish it only together with her Proposal for a Directive on credit agreement related to residential property and the associated Impact Asssessment. Visit the DG Markt mortgage credit website.  The site has also our extensive legal baseline annex.

I have separated the section of the above study on Early Repayment, which is of potential interest for anybody looking into fixed-rate mortgage lending regulation regimes. Download here.

Jan 2011 Paper analyzing the excessive borrower leverage problem in U.S. mortgage finance and suggesting to address it (inter alia) via contract savings for housing (Bausparen)