The loan at the heart of a new foreclosure crisis

概览

This episode of Planet Money investigates how two little-known out-of-town real estate investors quickly amassed more than 700 homes in Baltimore, borrowed about $100 million, and then saw many of those properties slide into foreclosure.

The core financial product is the DSCR loan, a commercial-style mortgage for landlords that does not require personal income verification. The episode explains why these loans grew rapidly, why Wall Street liked them, and why Baltimore became a revealing stress test for the model.

The reporting follows Baltimore Banner journalists Jack and Hallie as they trace property records, identify suspicious patterns, travel to New York to confront people connected to the portfolio, and explore whether the problem was bad actors, weak lending controls, or a broader appetite for risky mortgage products.

分段落总结

[00:24] A Tip About Investor Foreclosures

[事实] Jack, a Baltimore Banner business and development reporter, received a tip about two major investor foreclosures involving Baltimore homes. [事实] The investors had bought many row homes quickly, borrowed heavily, and were now seeing properties head to auction. [事实] Jack and Hallie Miller began checking public records and found that two little-known investors had built a portfolio of more than 700 homes. [事实] Their spreadsheet showed the investors had borrowed about $100 million in only a few years.

[03:53] The Bigger Story Beyond Baltimore

[事实] Planet Money frames the case as part of a national story about a fast-growing loan product. [事实] The episode says Wall Street has been funneling billions of dollars into these loans. [推测] Baltimore becomes the episode’s case study for whether the product is useful financial innovation or a warning sign about repeated mortgage-market mistakes.

[05:27] Baltimore Row Homes and the DSCR Loan

[事实] Baltimore is known for row homes, which make up about half of the city’s housing. [事实] Many row homes are deteriorated, but investors had recently brought more money into rehabbing them. [事实] The loans behind the 700-home portfolio were Debt Service Coverage Ratio loans, or DSCR loans. [事实] DSCR loans are commercial loans for people buying homes to rent out, rather than traditional owner-occupant mortgages.

[07:33] Why No-Income Loans Raised Alarm

[事实] DSCR loans do not require borrowers to prove employment or personal income. [事实] The episode compares this feature to pre-financial-crisis “ninja loans,” which stood for no income, no job, no assets. [事实] After the financial crisis, Congress tightened rules around mortgage lending, including income and asset checks. [事实] DSCR loans remain possible because they are treated as business-type loans rather than traditional consumer mortgages.

[08:16] How Private Lending Expanded After the Crisis

[事实] Eric Abramovich, co-founder of Roc360, says the DSCR story begins with private lenders serving fix-and-flip investors after the financial crisis. [事实] Fix-and-flip loans were exempt from many post-crisis mortgage regulations because they were considered business loans. [事实] Traditional banks were not central players in this lending niche, so smaller private lenders filled the gap. [事实] Eric’s company saw an opportunity to connect local private lending with Wall Street capital.

[10:05] Wall Street Enters the Market

[事实] Money from pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign wealth funds began flowing into fix-and-flip lending. [事实] As more capital entered, lenders moved beyond short-term fix-and-flip loans and began offering 30-year mortgages for landlords. [事实] These longer-term landlord mortgages became known as DSCR loans. [推测] The shift turned a niche lending product into a scalable Wall Street-backed mortgage channel.

[11:17] Why DSCR Loans Became Popular

[事实] Eric says early DSCR loans were very popular. [事实] Wall Street liked DSCR loans because lenders could charge higher interest rates than on traditional mortgages. [事实] Landlords liked them because the application process was easier and did not require W-2s or years of income history. [事实] Lenders mainly evaluated the borrower’s credit score, the home’s appraised value, and expected rental income.

[12:49] Rapid Growth of the Product

[事实] The episode says lenders originated about $20 billion in DSCR loans in 2021. [事实] By 2025, that figure had more than doubled to about $50 billion. [事实] Much of this lending involved mom-and-pop landlords, according to Eric. [推测] The rapid growth made weaknesses in appraisal, rental estimates, and borrower oversight more consequential.

[13:18] Tracing the Baltimore Loans

[事实] Jack and Hallie found that the Baltimore loans came from dozens of private lenders around the country. [事实] Some lender names included Cake Mortgage and Loan Funder LLC. [事实] Loan Funder was connected to Roc360. [事实] Jack says the lending process appeared simple and fast, often handled electronically or by phone.

[14:11] Foreclosures and Suspicious Patterns

[事实] Starting in late 2024, many properties in the portfolio began going into foreclosure around the same time. [事实] Companies tied to one landlord declared bankruptcy. [事实] Bankruptcy records indicated that only about a third of the homes had ever been occupied. [事实] Jack and Hallie also found that the investors appeared to pay double or triple what some homes had sold for only a few years earlier.

[15:44] The Mystery of Eliezer Gold

[事实] Eliezer Gold and his LLCs had bought more than 500 of the homes. [事实] People in Baltimore told the reporters they had not seen or heard much of him before the foreclosure problems. [事实] Jack and Hallie tried to contact Gold by phone, email, letters, and through attorneys. [事实] After receiving no response, they decided to travel to Spring Valley, New York, to seek him out.

[19:06] A New York Road Trip and a Clue

[事实] Jack and Hallie went to an address in Spring Valley that appeared repeatedly in paperwork connected to Eliezer Gold. [事实] A driver who looked like Gold left in a black SUV without speaking to them. [事实] The reporters then contacted Benjamin Eidlis, who had sold more than 100 Baltimore homes to Gold. [事实] While speaking with Eidlis, they saw a call from “Elie Gold” appear on his car console.

[22:28] The Fraud Theory

[推测] Jack and Hallie developed a theory that the Baltimore transactions might fit a known type of mortgage fraud involving inflated sale prices between closely connected parties. [事实] The episode explicitly says this was only a theory. [事实] In the described scheme, one person buys a home cheaply, sells it to a close associate at an inflated price, and uses that price to obtain a larger mortgage. [推测] DSCR loans could make such a scheme easier to repeat because there is no clear limit on how many loans an investor can obtain.

[24:12] Reporting, Investigation, and Blacklists

[事实] Jack, Hallie, and Sahana Jayaraman published a series of stories about the Baltimore properties and their suspicions. [事实] The episode notes that the landlords may also have been trying their best and simply became overwhelmed. [事实] The FBI opened an investigation into Eliezer Gold, Benjamin Eidlis, and others. [事实] Private lenders placed those names on a blacklist, and Gold and Eidlis declined to comment.

[24:44] Who Bears Responsibility

[事实] The episode asks whether responsibility lies only with possible bad actors or also with DSCR loans themselves. [事实] Lenders rely on appraisals and rent estimates, which can sometimes be only one person’s judgment. [事实] The episode also questions whether Wall Street’s search for higher returns encourages too much risk. [推测] The story echoes the financial crisis because both involve Wall Street demand for riskier mortgage products.

[25:44] Eric Abramovich’s Defense

[事实] Eric rejects the comparison to the pre-crisis era, saying things are very different now. [事实] He argues that credit became too tight after the financial crisis. [事实] He says the United States has a housing shortage and needs money to build new homes and repair old ones. [事实] He argues Wall Street capital helps make that money available.

[26:38] Bad Loans and Market Scale

[事实] Jack and Hallie told Planet Money that about $35 million of the $100 million in bad loans came from private lenders associated with Eric’s company. [事实] Eric says that if a lender has no defaults, it is doing something wrong. [事实] The episode says current data show most DSCR loans nationally still appear to be performing fine. [事实] DSCR loans are described as roughly 2% of new mortgage loans for single-family homes, but growing quickly.

[27:35] The Human Cost on Edding Street

[事实] Jack and Hallie took Planet Money to the 2400 block of Edding Street, a historically Black neighborhood in Baltimore. [事实] Eliezer Gold’s LLC had bought 20 red brick row houses on one side of the street. [事实] Those homes went into foreclosure, and one had recently burned. [事实] The homes were boarded up, abandoned, and had deteriorated compared with the reporters’ earlier visit.

[29:01] Neighbors’ View of Outside Investors

[事实] Neighbors Bisa Revlon and Jean Henry said the block used to be full of families and children. [事实] They said the side of the street with the investor-owned houses had worsened. [事实] Bisa compared the out-of-town investors’ behavior to playing Monopoly. [推测] For residents, the financial mechanics of DSCR lending translate into visible neighborhood decline when investors abandon properties.

[30:01] Baltimore’s Dilemma

[事实] Baltimore has many homes that need investment and rehabilitation. [事实] After the 700-home episode, some private lenders stopped lending in Baltimore altogether. [事实] It has become harder in Baltimore to get a DSCR loan. [推测] The city is caught between needing outside capital to repair housing and suffering harm when that capital is poorly controlled.

播客点评/总结

This episode is strongest as an investigative finance story: it connects a local Baltimore housing mystery to a national lending trend without losing sight of the people living next to the abandoned properties.

Its main value is explaining how DSCR loans work in plain language, why they can be attractive to landlords and Wall Street, and where the product may create openings for abuse. The reporting is careful to separate confirmed facts from theory, especially around possible fraud.

[推测] The episode is especially useful for listeners interested in housing markets, Wall Street finance, mortgage regulation, urban disinvestment, and the unintended effects of financial innovation.

[推测] Its limitation is that the investigation is still unresolved: Gold and Eidlis do not comment, the FBI investigation is ongoing, and the episode cannot definitively say whether the Baltimore case was fraud, incompetence, or some mix of both.