This paper traces the effects which federal policy has had on home mortgage finance in the United States. In the past, the phases of intervention have been described as 1) the New Deal responses to the Great Depression, 2) the creation of the Government- Sponsored Enterprises and promotion of the secondary market, and 3) the deregulation of the banking industry. This paper uses the historical backdrop to examine the current era of intervention, including the Making Home Affordable initiative. The paper concludes with policy recommendations that tie past experience with current problems and explores shared equity homeownership as a sustainable model for the future. / text

The United States is in the midst of a rather severe housing crisis. Home prices have declined and foreclosures have increased in cities all over the country. The crisis began in 2007 and has continued into the fourth quarter of 2008. Some cities have been severely affected by the housing crisis while others have been able to maintain relatively healthy housing markets. This paper demonstrates the local nature of housing markets and the factors which shape them. Analyses of the local housing markets of Austin, TX, Atlanta, GA and Miami, FL comprise the bulk of this paper and demonstrate the broad spectrum of housing market conditions that exist today. The lessons learned from the three case studies finally lead to some recommendations for local planners which could prove effective for creating and maintaining healthy local housing markets. / text

The diploma thesis deals with financial planning using the multi-criteria methods for evaluation of alternatives. The theoretical part of this work includes basic phrases of multicriteria decision making, there are concretely described the methods with the cardinal information and methods of calculation of the criteria weights. There are also exactly written the procedures how to realize mortgage loans. The reader is informed with problems of target programming and basic financial and insurance patterns. The core of this thesis is chapter four. The beginning of the fourth chapter is focused on the selection of appropriate criteria and the assignment of their weights. Most calculations are made with help of the Sanna MS Excel add-in application. Finally the author formed the financial portfolio by using software Lingo. There are established two investment options and these options are compared. The main objective of this thesis is to compare which of these two chosen options is more profitable in the long run.