The following report provides an overview of a Home Value Protection (HVP) product to evaluate the practicality of making such a program more widely available and provide background for anyone considering such a plan. The paper is based largely on the Home Value Protection product established in Syracuse New York in 2002, and a number of the authors of this paper participated in the establishment of the Syracuse Home Value Protection program.The paper contains four sections:1: Investor OutreachThis section provides background information about the Syracuse program, the current and potential participants and what roles they might play, a review of a few of the ways such a program could be implemented, and links to various media coverage.2: Index ResearchThe Syracuse program measured changes in house values by a real estate index for the area (rather than individual house sale price), and this section evaluates a number of different index methods using four markets historical data to see how well the different indexes would have performed with a HVP product (had it been available).3: Capital Requirements & PricingThis section provides a model for estimating the pricing requirements and capital required for a program across multiple markets. While not exhaustive, this approach will provide a useful reference and starting point for anyone evaluating investment in such a program.4: Regulatory EnvironmentThis section provides information on some of the regulatory entities across the markets used in the analysis. Due to the variations in the way a HVP product could be implemented, regulations could apply in a variety of ways and this section can only offer a starting point for potential investors or participants
