Safe as Houses: Financialization, Foreclosure, and Precarious Homeownership in the United States

The financialization of the U.S. economy has had important implications for household well-being, but the mechanisms connecting financialization and precarity have not been fully identified. This research identifies mortgage foreclosure as a nexus connecting macro-level financialization to an array...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican sociological review Vol. 89; no. 2; pp. 197 - 226
Main Author Kahn, Walker Nelson
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.04.2024
American Sociological Association
Subjects
Administrators
Clearing houses
Court records
Default
Foreclosure
Home ownership
Homeowners
Housing
Housing costs
International economic relations
Mortgages
Profits
Securitization
Technology
Well being
United States > US
mortgage foreclosure
mortgage securitization
debt collection
housing precarity
financialization
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Summary:The financialization of the U.S. economy has had important implications for household well-being, but the mechanisms connecting financialization and precarity have not been fully identified. This research identifies mortgage foreclosure as a nexus connecting macro-level financialization to an array of downstream consequences for homeowners and asks (1) how mortgage securitization, a key technology of financialization, enabled new foreclosure practices; and (2) how these practices affect housing precarity among homeowners at risk of foreclosure. To answer these questions, I analyze court records, interviews with key participants, and primary source documents to examine the evolution of mortgage foreclosure in Cook County, Illinois, from 1992 to 2006. I find that as mortgage securitization transformed the social and economic relations between borrowers and lenders, foreclosure became actively managed as both a driver of costs and a source of profits, and loan administrators and their attorneys worked to reduce costly borrower protections. These changes increased housing precarity by making foreclosure more frequent and more rapid.
ISSN:0003-1224
1939-8271
DOI:10.1177/00031224241231011