History of mortgages before and after the Great Depression

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Before the Great Depression:

Mortgages have been around for nearly 1000 years, if not longer. James Kent's Commentaries of American Law, Volume 4, notes:

The English law of mortgages appears to have been borrowed in a great degree from the civil law; and the Roman hypotheca corresponded very closely with the description of a mortgage in our law. The land was retained by the debtor, and the creditor was entitled to his action hypothecaria (obtain the surrender of the thing mortgaged), to obtain possession of the pledge, when the debtor was in default; and the debtor had his action to regain possession, when the debt was paid, or satisfied out of the profits, and he might redeem at any time before a sale. (Green, 2014)

Rose and Snowden (2013) describe the method of mortgage finance for a good part of the nineteenth century:

"The share accumulation plan was the contractual foundation of the building and loan movement in the U.S. In the earliest B&Ls, all members joined in order to eventually become borrowers. From the outset each member would commit to accumulate shares of the size he needed to pay for a home, through the payment of compulsory monthly dues. For example, if a member desired to accumulate $1000 for a house, he would subscribe for five shares with maturity value of $200 each. Members would then take turns in borrowing from the pot of money created by these dues. By the time it was a member's turn to borrow, he would have already accumulated part of his shares (and retained dividends) that would eventually be used to pay off the loan in full.
Share accumulation loans were straight, balloon loans that also required the creation of a sinking fund in the form of shares to repay the loan at maturity. Thus, they were quite ...