No, criminals can buy houses just fine. This is about giving them a loan and expecting them to pay it back over a long period of time. It's a huge risk. If the

No, criminals can buy houses just fine. This is about giving them a loan and expecting them to pay it back over a long period of time. It's a huge risk. If the buyer is going to...go to jail...or get murdered...or have some other unpredictable interruption in their ability to make payments- or just decide to defraud the lender- the lender is not to get their interest and principal. And maybe the house is not going to be maintained. The lien on the house is not really the backstop someone might think it is. Beyond that, foreclosing is terrible from a property valuation perspective. It's not the criminality per se. It's the unpredictability that criminality necessarily beds down with. Beyond that, when you are a lender who relies on the state for sanctioned violence, when you don't have your own goon squad or worse- lending to people who are not going to comply with or be responsive to state-sanctioned violence- you actually really cannot be more stupid with your money.