“Miller points his finger at securitization. Once the mortgages are bundled and sliced up into different pieces, known as tranches, the owners of the pieces get paid back according to a certain pecking order. Senior investors get paid back first and if there’s a loss, the most junior investors won’t get anything. It’s those investors who are blocking short sales.”
“The people with the least senior tranches have no reason to agree to the modification because they take a complete loss and the people in the most senior tranches don’t lose anything. So they’ve managed to structure their mortgages in a way that makes it almost impossible to modify or sell short,” said Miller.”
