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considerations made it improbable that the partnership would have
redeemed the property.
Respondent focuses too narrowly, we believe, on the question
of whether the partnership would have exercised the redemption
rights, had they been awarded, to repurchase the project assets
from DOE outright. Such an inquiry would improperly lead us
“into endless speculation on petitioner’s financial situation and
financial hopes”. Derby Realty Corp. v. Commissioner, supra at
341 (rejecting any “supposed principle of probability of
redemption”); cf. Abelson v. Commissioner, 44 B.T.A. 98 (1941)
(concluding that redemption rights were wholly without value and
abandoned by the taxpayer who took no further action after the
foreclosure sale to pursue redemption rights). Moreover,
respondent fails to appreciate that the public policy served by
redemption rights is not merely in providing the mortgagor an
opportunity to repurchase property sold in foreclosure but also
in “‘allowing time for the mortgagor to refinance and save his
property, [and] permitting additional use of the property by the
hard-pressed mortgagor’”. Nelson & Whitman, “Reforming
Foreclosure: The Uniform Nonjudicial Foreclosure Act”, 53 Duke
L.J. 1399, 1404 (2004) (quoting Hart, “The Statutory Right of
Redemption in California”, 52 Cal. L. Rev. 846, 848 (1964)).
North Dakota law reflected this broader purpose of redemption
rights, as the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit expressly
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